LIBRARY 

OF  THK 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA. 

Class 


THE    INCOMPARABLE    SIDDONS 


indisputably  the  finest  female  portrait  in  the  world" 


SIR    THOS.  LAWRENCE   TO    THE    R.A.   STUDENTS,    1824 


THE 

INCOMPARABLE 
SIDDONS 


BY 

MRS.  CLEMENT  PARSONS 

AUTHOR  OF   "GARRICK   AND   HIS  CIRCLE" 


WITH  TWENTY  ILLUSTRATIONS 


Y   ) 


NEW  YORK:  G.   P.   PUTNAM'S  SONS 

LONDON:   METHUEN   &  CO, 

1909 


TO 

KATE    TERRY    GIELGUD 

AFFECTIONATELY 


194224 


AUTHOR'S  PREFACE 

THIS  book,  though  certainly  no  conclusive  ' Life/  aims 
at  being  a  study  of  a  personality,  and,  at  the  same 
time,  a  contribution  towards  that  definitive  History  of 
the  English  Stage  which  is  yet  unwritten.  In  the  case  of  an 
art  that  can  bequeath  no  assurance  of  itself  save  the  recorded 
impression  created  on  contemporary  observers,  sifting  and 
collating  of  descriptive  notes  and  criticisms  are  peculiarly 
needed.  From  a  mass  of  data,  accumulated  during  three 
years'  search,  I  have  attempted  to  construct  an  image, 
approximately  true,  of  the  foremost  example  of  genius  in 
woman  this  country  has  produced,  one  who,  in  words  Irving 
used  concerning  her,  "helped  to  make  the  name  of  England 
illustrious  throughout  the  world."  I  have  tried  to  disentangle 
from  her  kinsfolk  and  fellow-artists  the  individual  self  of 
Sarah  Siddons,  and  to  summarise,  as  authentically  as,  at  this 
distance  of  time,  is  possible,  her  style,  ideals,  and  methods. 

The  sense  of  a  woman-artist's  duality,  both  as  to  life-work 
and  character,  must  be  present  with  her  biographer,  but,  far 
more  particularly  if  she  was  an  actress,  a  conviction  emerges 
of  the  decided  extent  to  which  the  artist  self  impinged  on  the 
woman  self.  Whoever  writes  a  great  actress's  memoir  traces 
a  twofold  story,  full  of  curious  psychologic  correlation. 

The  wonder  is  that  half  a  dozen  adequate  biographies  of 
Mrs.  Siddons  do  not  exist.  Midway  in  her  career,  John 
Taylor,  sometime  an  oculist,  afterwards  author  of  Monsieur 
Tonson  and  proprietor  of  The  Sun,  proposed  to  her  to  write 
a  narrative,  to  date,  but  she  discouraged  the  idea,  apparently 

vii 


viii  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

from  a  feeling  that  a  friend's  biography  of  a  living  person  is 
bound  to  appear  fulsome  to  outsiders.  Boaden  was  the  next 
aspirant.  Four  years  before  the  death  of  his  '  biographee,' 
fifteen  after  her  retirement,  he  published  his  earlier  edition  of 
Memoirs  of  Mrs.  Siddons.  No  tyro  at  dramatic  biography, 
he  was,  at  the  time,  sixty-five — which  may  account  for  his 
digressions  and  touch  of  Polonius.  His  book  has  been  unduly 
condemned,  notably  by  Mrs.  Siddons's  nephew,  J.  M.  Kemble, 
who  wished  to  kick  him  for  it,  and  asked  W.  B.  Donne  whether 
it  was  not  "abominable  that  such  a  fellow  should  perfectly 
unauthorised  sit  down,  to  scribble  on  a  subject  of  all  others 
the  most  ticklish,  when  in  addition  to  the  drawback  of  knowing 
nothing  whatever  of  his  hero,  he  adds  that  of  knowing  very 
little  more  of  his  own  language."  Boaden  was  long-winded, 
and,  sometimes,  cryptic,  as  where,  writing  of  Cumberland's 
Carmelite,  he  regretted  that  "the  hideous  Hildebrand  alone 
presses  the  green  floorcloth  of  dramatic  expiation,"  but  he 
was  a  sound  judge  of  plays  and  playing,  and  he  wrote  like 
a  gentleman.  Turning  over  his  pages  while  writing  my  own, 
I  recalled  North's  reply  to  Hogg's  question,  "  Hae  ye  read 
Boaden's  Life  d  Siddons,  sir ? "  "I  have,  James — and  I 
respect  Mr.  Boaden  for  his  intelligent  criticism.  He  is  rather 
prosy  occasionally — but  why  not?  God  knows,  he  cannot 
be  more  prosy  than  I  am  now  at  this  blessed  moment." 

I  cannot  say,  with  Campbell,  that  I  "  applied  "  so  arduously 
to  write  on  Mrs.  Siddons  that  my  physicians  "  told  me  that 
unless  I  desisted  I  should  sacrifice  my  own  life  to "  hers.  The 
authorised  biography,  dilatorily  published  in  1834,  that  cost  so 
much  travail,  reflects,  for  the  most  part,  its  writer's  inappetency. 
Campbell  did  not  hold,  with  Cicero,  that  "  Vitce  bene  actejucun- 
dissima  est  recordatio"  The  materials  for  a  determinate  work — 
numerous  letters,  autograph  Memoranda  and  diary — placed  by 
Mrs.  Siddons  in  his  hands  for  use  after  her  death,  disappeared, 
under  his  charge,  and  in  their  place  we  have  a  piece  of  joyless 
task-work,  as  he  himself  avowed  his  book  to  be.  Mrs.  Jameson 


AUTHOR'S  PREFACE  ix 

greatly  desired  to  write  a  biography  while  Mrs.  Siddons's 
memory  was  yet  green,  but  the  way  was  jealously  barred 
by  Campbell.  He,  meantime,  so  mismanaged  or  neglected 
his  material  that  for  the  most  characteristic  and  informative 
of  Mrs.  Siddons's  letters  we  have  to  turn  to  Journals  and 
Correspondence  of  Thomas  Sedgwick  Whalley,  where  they  are 
incidental,  and  not  the  staple.  In  our  day,  two  works  have 
appeared  concerning  Mrs.  Siddons.  In  Mr.  Percy  Fitzgerald's 
The  Kembles,  she  stands  as  the  principal  member  of  a  dis- 
tinguished family,  while  Mrs.  Kennard's  competent  monograph 
professes  only  to  be  a  brief  abstract  of  her  history. 

After  the  lapse  of  three  quarters  of  a  century,  biographers 
should  tell,  surely,  not  whatever  can  be  told,  but  whatever  is 
worth  telling.  To  me,  the  majority  of  old  playbills  seem  dead 
leaves  on  the  Tree  of  Useless  Knowledge,  and,  therefore,  I  have 
not  weighted  my  book  with  the  thousand  obtainable  details  of 
first  night  dates  of  forgotten  tragedies,  the  number  of  nights 
each  ran,  the  number  of  Mrs.  Siddons's  appearances  season  by 
season,  etc.  These  trifles  form  scarcely  even  the  framework 
of  the  real  memorabilia. 

Besides  thanks  due  to  friends  named  elsewhere  in  this  book, 
it  is  a  great  pleasure  to  express  my  indebtedness  to  others  who 
have  helped  me,  either  by  the  loan  of  letters  and  pictures  or 
the  gift  of  items  of  out-of-the-way  information.  To  the  late 
Mrs.  Quintin  Twiss  and  to  her  family  I  have  been  specially 
obliged.  Mr.  H.  G.  I.  Siddons,  also,  has  elucidated  for  me 
several  points  of  family  history.  I  wish  to  record  my  gratitude 
to  Mr.  Oswald  G.  Knapp,  Mr.  J.  H.  Leigh,  the  Rev.  N.  F.  Y. 
Kemble,  Miss  Gwenllian  Morgan,  Mrs.  H.  Barham  Johnson, 
Lady  Brooke,  Captain  Horatio  Kemble,  R.N.,  Mr.  Joseph  Hill, 
and  Mr.  Alfred  Parsons. 

Lawrence,  at  Dr.  Whalley's  request,  made  a  delightful  draw- 
ing of  Cecilia  Siddons,  which  passed  into  the  possession  of 
Whalley's  greatnephew,  the  Rev.  Hill  Wickham,  to  the  kindness 
of  whose  daughter,  its  present  owner,  Lady  Seymour,  I  owe 


x  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

the  inclusion  of  a  reproduction.  To  Mr.  W.  S.  Brassington, 
Mrs.  Seymour  Fort,  Mr.  N.  Beard,  and  Miss  Mary  M.  Watts 
I  am  indebted  for  divers  sorts  of  help.  I  gladly  make  my 
acknowledgments  to  Messrs.  George  Allen  &  Sons  and  to 
Messrs.  Chatto  &  Windus  for  their  courteous  permission  to  me 
to  quote  from  works  published  by  them,  also  to  the  Editors  of 
the  Nineteenth  Century  and  Notes  and  Queries  for  leave  to  quote 
from  articles. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

AUTHOR'S  PREFACE  .  .  .  .  .  .        vii 

LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS     ......      xiii 

WORKS  CONSULTED  .  .  .  .  .  .XV 

DATES  AND  EVENTS  ......    xviii 

I.   YOUNG  GIRLHOOD ....  .  I 

II.   FALSE  DAWN  :   1775  ....  .         l8 

III.  MRS.  SIDDONS  OF  THE  BATH  THEATRE      .  •        31 

IV.  THE  BATH  CIRCLE  ....  -44 
V.  CONQUEST  OF  LONDON       ...                                              •        52 

VI.  THE  WAY  OF  HER  GENIUS                ...  -7° 
VII.  SOME  EARLY  PARTS              ....  8 1 
VIII.   HER  STARRING  EXPERIENCES        ...  -95 
IX.   HER  INTERPRETATION  OF  SHAKESPEARE  .  .114 
X.  JOHN  PHILIP  KEMBLE         .               .               .               .  .  -133 
XI.  OTHER  BROTHERS  AND  SISTERS   .               .               .  .  -147 
XII.  PIZARRO    AND    SHERIDAN,  AND  VARIOUS    PLAYS  AND    PLAY- 
WRIGHTS .               .               .               .               .               .  •  .156 

XIII.  PROMINENT  THEATRICAL  CONTEMPORARIES        .  .  .      l68 

XIV.  HER  HUSBAND  AND  CHILDREN      .              .               .  .  .183 
XV.   FRIENDS      .               .               .               .               .               .  •  .211 

XVI.   ART,  CIRCUMSTANCES,  AND  CHARACTER  IN  MATURITY  .  .      228 

XVII.   GREAT  MEN  AND  GREAT  LADIES  .....      249 

XVIII.  MRS.  SIDDONS'S  RETIREMENT  AND  PUBLIC  READINGS     .  .      263 

XIX.   LAST  YEARS  AND  SURROUNDINGS  ....      276 

APPENDIXES  .......      290 

INDEX  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  -293 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 

MRS.  SIDDONS  AS  THE  TRAGIC  MUSE  .  .  .  Frontispiece 

From  the  Engraving  by  FRANCIS  HAWARD,  after  the  Painting  by 
REYNOLDS 

FACING 
PAGE 

MRS.  SIDDONS'S  BIRTHPLACE     ......       2 

From  a  Drawing  in  Campbell's  Life  of  Mrs.  Siddons.  The  modern 
Photograph  by  Mr.  R.  E.  CHARLES 

ROGER  KEMBLE   .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .8 

From  the  Miniature  by  OZIAS  HUMPHREYS  in  the  Shakespeare 
Memorial  Collection,  Stratford -upon -Avon.  Reproduced  by 
permission  of  the  Governors  of  the  Shakespeare  Memorial. 
Photograph  by  Mr.  L.  C.  KEIGHLEY  PEACH 

Guv's  CLIFFE       ........      16 

From  a  Drawing  by  ALFRED  PARSONS,  A.R.A.,  in  The  Warwickshire 
Avon.  Reproduced  by  kind  permission  of  Messrs.  Harper  & 
Brothers 

A  GARRICK-SIDDONS  PLAYBILL  .  .  .  .  .28 

By  kind  permission  of  the  owner,  J.  H.  Leigh,  Esq. 

MRS.  SIDDONS.    FROM  AN  OIL  SKETCH  BY  ROMNEY          .  .      38 

(Till  recently,  this  sketch  had  been  a  hundred  years  in  the  possession 
of  the  Martineau  family. ) 

MRS.  SIDDONS  IN  REYNOLDS'S  STUDIO          .  .  .  .62 

From  an  Oil  Painting  by  Sir  W.  Q.  ORCHARDSON,  R.A.  Reproduced 
by  permission  of  the  Fine  Art  Society 

MRS.  SIDDONS.    BY  AN  UNKNOWN  PAINTER  .  .  .76 

In  the  Dyce  Collection,  Victoria  and  Albert  Museum 

MRS.  SIDDONS.    BY  GAINSBOROUGH    .  .  .  .  .108 

From  the  Picture  in  the  National  Gallery 

A  PAGE  FROM  PROFESSOR  G.  J.  BELL'S  NOTES  ON  MRS.  SIDDONS'S 
PLAYING  OF  LADY  MACBETH        .  .  .  .  .122 

By  kind  permission  of  the  owner,  F.  Jeffrey  Bell,  Esq. 
xiii 


xiv  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

FACING 
PAGE 

THE  KEMBLE  FAMILY  IN  HENRY  vin          .          .          .          .128 

From  the  Mezzotint  by  GEORGE  CLINT,  after  the  Painting  by  G.  H. 
HARLOW 

MRS.  SIDDONS,  AS  LADY  MACBETH     .  .  .  .  .144 

From  the  scarce  Lithograph  after  HARLOW.  By  kind  permission  of 
the  owner,  the  Rev.  Martin  S.  Ware 

MRS.  SIDDONS.    BY  THOMAS  LAWRENCE,  P.R.A.     .  .  .158 

From  the  Oil  Painting  Mrs.  Siddons's  Daughter,  Mrs.  Combe, 
bequeathed,  in  1868,  to  the  National  Gallery 

WILLIAM  SIDDONS.    BY  JOHN  OPIE,  R.A.      .  .  .  .184 

From  the  Oil  Painting  Mrs.  Siddons's  Daughter,  Mrs.  Combe, 
bequeathed,  in  1868,  to  the  National  Gallery 

MARIA  SIDDONS  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .194 

From  a  Sketch  in  Oils  by  LAWRENCE.  Reproduced  by  kind  permission 
of  Lord  Ronald  Gower  and  Messrs.  Goupils'  Successors 

CECILIA  SIDDONS  .......    200 

From  a  Crayon  Drawing  by  LAWRENCE.  By  kind  permission  of  the 
owner,  Lady  Seymour 

A  LETTER  FROM  MRS.  SIDDONS  ON  THE  DEATH  OF  HER  SON  .  218 

By  kind  permission  of  the  owner,  J.  H.  Leigh,  Esq. 

MRS.  SIDDONS.    BY  G.  H.  HARLOW    .  .  .  .  .238 

WESTBOURNE  FARM       .......    260 

From  an  Engraving  by  I.  HASSELL,  after  a  Drawing  by  P.  GALINDO 

MRS.  SIDDONS.    ATTRIBUTED  TO  JOACHIM  SMITH    .          .  .282 

From  a  Bust  in  the  Shakespeare  Memorial  Collection,  Stratford-upon- 
Avon.  Reproduced  by  permission  of  the  Governors  of  the  Shake- 
speare Memorial.  Photograph  by  Mr.  L.  C.  KEIGHLEY  PEACH 


WORKS  CONSULTED 

Some  Account  of  the  English  Stage  from  1660-1830.     By  the  Rev.  John  Genest. 

10  vols.,  1832. 
Drury  Lane  Theatre.     A  collection  of  documents,  playbills,  newspaper  cuttings  etc., 

relative  to  this  theatre  from  the  earliest  period  [1616]  to  1830,  chronologically 

arranged  by  Mr.  James  Winston.     23  vols.  (British  Museum,  B.K.S.  3.  i.  etc.). 
"  A  collection  of  materiel  towards  an  history  of  the  English  stage  collected  by  Richard 

John  Smith."     25  vols.     (Extra-illustrated  memoirs,  newspaper  cuttings,  etc. 

British  Museum,  118,  26  r,  s.) 
"  Collections  relating  to  Garrick  by  Capt.  James  Saunders."    4  vols.     (MSS  and 

newspaper  cuttings.     In  the   Shakespeare  Birthplace  Library,  Henley  Street, 

Stratford-upon-Avon. ) 

Dramatic  Miscellanies.     By  Thomas  Davies.     3  vols.,  1784. 

Annals  of  the  English  Stage.     Their  Majesties'  Servants.     By  Dr.  Doran.     Edited 

and  revised  by  Robert  W.  Lowe.     3  vols.,  1888. 
A  History  of  Theatrical  Art.     By  Karl  Mantzius.     Eng.  Trans,  by  Louisevon  Cossel. 

Vol.  v.,  1909. 

Memoirs  of  Mrs.  Siddons.     By  James  Boaden.     1827  ;  reprinted  1896. 

Life  of  Mrs.  Siddons.     By  Thomas  Campbell.     2  vols.,  1834. 

Journals  and  Correspondence  of  Thomas  Sedgwick  Whalley,  edited  by  the  Rev. 
Hill  Wickham.  2  vols.,  1863. 

An  Artist's  Love  Story.     Edited  by  Oswald  G.  Knapp.     1904. 

Record  of  a  Girlhood.     By  Frances  Anne  Kemble.     3  vols.,  1878. 

Recollections  of  the  Past.     By  E.  H.  M.  [Mrs.  Mair].     1877. 

Memoirs  of  the  Life  of  J.  P.  Kemble.     By  James  Boaden.     2  vols.,  1825. 

Biographical  notices  of  players,  by  Joseph  Knight,  in  Dictionary  of  National  Bio- 
graphy. 63  vols.,  1885-1900. 

The  Kembles.     By  Percy  Fitzgerald.     2  vols.,  1871. 

Mrs.  Siddons.     By  Mrs.  A.  Kennard  (Eminent  Women  Series).     1887. 

The  Life  and  Times  of  the  Venerable  Father  John  Kemble,  Priest  and  Martyr.  By 
Richard  Raises  Bromage.  1902. 


xvi  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

The  Theatrical  Portrait,  a  poem  on  the  celebrated  Mrs.  Siddons  in  the  characters  of 

Calista,  Jane  Shore,  Belvidera,  and  Isabella.     1783. 
The  Siddoniad.     1785. 
The  Beauties  of  Mrs.  Siddons :  or  a  review  of  her  performance  of  the  characters  of 

Belvidera,   etc.,    in  letters  from   a  lady  of    distinction   to   her  friend  in   the 

country.     1786. 

The  Green-Room  Mirror,  chiefly  delineating  our  present  theatrical  performers.    1786. 
Papers  literary,  scientific,  etc.     By  H.  C.  Fleeming  Jenkin.     2  vols.,  1887.     (Con- 
taining G.  J.  Bell's  notes,  taken  in  the  theatre,  on  Mrs.  Siddons's  acting. ) 
Critical  Essays  on  the  Performers  of  the  London  Theatres.     By  the  Author  of  the 

Theatrical  Criticisms  in   the  Weekly  Paper  called    "The  News"  \_i.c.    Leigh 

Hunt].     1807. 
Dramatic  Essays  by  Leigh   Hunt.     Edited  by  William   Archer  and   Robert  W. 

Lowe.     1894. 

A  View  of  the  English  Stage.     By  William  Hazlitt.     1818. 
Table-Talk.     By  William  Hazlitt.     2  vols.,  1822. 
Dramatic  Essays  by  William  Hazlitt.     Edited  by  William  Archer  and  Robert  W. 

Lowe.     1895. 
Notes  on  some  of  Shakespeare's  Plays.     By  Frances  Anne  Kemble.     1882. 

Sir  Thomas  Lawrence's  Letter-Bag.     By  George  Somes  Layard.     1906. 
Sir  Thomas  Lawrence.     By  Lord  Ronald  Sutherland  Gower.     1900. 
Thomas  Lawrence  et  la  Societe  Anglaise  de  son  Temps.     Three  articles  by  T.  de 
Wyzewa  in  Tomes  5  et  6  (1891)  of  the  Gazette  des  Beaux-Arts  (Paris). 

The    Private    Correspondence  of    David    Garrick.     (Edited    by   James    Boaden.) 

2  vols.,  1831. 

Memoirs  of  Mrs.  Inchbald.     By  James  Boaden.     2  vols.,  1833. 
Life  and  Times  of  Frederick  Reynolds.     Written  by  himself.     2  vols.,  1826. 
Records  of  my  Life.     By  John  Taylor.     2  vols.,  1832. 
An  Old  Man's  Diary.     By  John  Payne  Collier.     1871-72. 
Lady  Morgan's  Memoirs.     Edited  by  W.  Hepworth  Dixon.     2  vols.,  1862. 
A  Memoir  of  Charles  Mayne  Young.     By  Julian  Charles  Young.     2  vols.,  1871. 
Macready's  Reminiscences.     Edited  by  Sir  F.  Pollock,  Bart.     2  vols.,  1875. 
Diary  of  the  Right  Hon.  William  Windham  (1784-1810).     Edited  by  Mrs.  Henry 

Baring.     1866. 
The  Life  of  Sir  Walter  Scott.     By  John  Gibson   Lockhart.     Edinburgh   Edition. 

10  vols.,  1902. 
Scott's  "Reviewal  of  Boaden's  Memoirs  of  Kemble,"  Quarterly  Review,  No.  67, 

April  1826,  and  in  Miscellaneous  Works,  XX. 
Reminiscences  and  Table-Talk  of  Samuel  Rogers.     1903. 
Memoirs  of  his  Own  Life.     By  Tate  Wilkinson.     4  vols.,  1790. 
The  Wandering  Patentee.     By  Tate  Wilkinson.     4  vols.,  1795. 


WORKS  CONSULTED  xvii 

The  Life  of  Mrs.  Jordan.     By  James  Boaden.     2vols.,i83i. 

Personal  Sketches  of  his  Own  Times  (Vol.  II.  (a),  A  Memoir  [by  the  Editor],  (b) 

Mrs.    Jordan,   (c)  Mrs.  Jordan  in  France).     By  Sir  Jonah  Barrington,  3  vols. 

(1827).     Edited  by  Townsend  Young,  LL.D.      1869. 
Tea-Table  Talk.     By  Mrs.  Mathews.     2  vols.,  1857. 
Memoirs  of  the  Life  of  William  Henry  West  Betty.     Liverpool,  1804. 

The  Struggle  for  a  Free  Stage  in  London.     By  Watson  Nicholson.     1906. 


NOTICEABLE    DATES    IN    MRS.    SIDDONS'S 

LIFE 

GEORGE  II  (1727-1760) 
1755.  Birtn  of  Sarah  Kemble  (afterwards  Siddons)  at  Brecon. 

GEORGE  III  (1760-1820) 

1773.  Sarah  Kemble  married  to  William  Siddons  at  Coventry. 

1774.  Henry,  Mrs.  Siddons's  eldest  child,  born. 

1775.  Sarah   Martha  (Sally),    her   second   child,   born.     Drury  Lane  engagement 

with  Garrick. 

1776.  Return  to  the  provinces. 

1779.  Maria,  Mrs.  Siddons's  third  child,  born. 

1781.  Frances  Emilia,  her  fourth  child,  born.     Dies  in  infancy. 

1782.  Mrs.  Siddons's  restoration  to  Drury  Lane  and  triumph  there. 

1784.  Reynolds  exhibits  Mrs.  Siddons's  portrait  as  'The  Tragic  Muse.' 

1785.  Mrs.  Siddons  first  plays  Lady  Macbeth.     George  John,  her  fifth  child,  born. 

1788.  Mrs.  Siddons  first  plays  Queen  Katharine. 

1789.  First  plays  Volumnia. 

1791.  Drury  Lane  Theatre  pulled  down. 

1794.  Holland's  new  Drury  Lane  opens  with  Mrs.  Siddons  in  Macbeth.  Cecilia, 
Mrs.  Siddons's  sixth  and  youngest  child,  born. 

1796.  Kemble  throws  up  Drury  Lane  Management. 

1798.  Death  of  Maria  Siddons. 

1800-1.  Kemble  resumes  Drury  Lane  Management,  but,  failing  to  enter  into  pro- 
prietorship, goes  over  (1802-3)  to  Covent  Garden,  purchasing  a  share. 

1802.  Roger  Kemble  dies. 

1803.  Sally  Siddons  dies.     Mrs.  Siddons,  having  quitted  Drury  Lane  the  previous 

year,   now  commences  to  act  at  Covent   Garden,   but  plays  no    new 
character  there. 

1804.  Mrs.  Siddons  settles  at  Bath. 

1805-6.  Mrs.  Siddons  engaged  at  Covent  Garden  from  now  till  her  retirement. 

1808.  Death  of  Mr.  Siddons.     Covent  Garden  Theatre  burnt.     Prince  of  Wales  lays 

stone  of  new  Covent  Garden. 

1809.  Drury  Lane  Theatre  burnt.     New  Covent  Garden  opened,  O.P.  riots. 


DATES  AND  EVENTS  xix 


THE  REGENCY  (1811-1820) 

1812.  Mrs.  Siddons's  last  appearances  and  retirement. 
1815.  Death  of  Henry  Siddons. 

GEORGE  IV  (1820-1830) 

WILLIAM  IV  (1830-1837) 
1831.  Death  of  Sarah  Siddons,  aged  seventy-six,  in  London. 


THE 
INCOMPARABLE    SIDDONS 


i 

YOUNG  GIRLHOOD 

1755.  "July  itfh  Sarah  Daughter  of  George  Kemble  a 
Comedian  &  Sarah  his  Wife  was  baptized" 

A  TTESTED  by  '  Thomas  Bevan.  Curate/  so  stands,  in 
the  Register  of  St.  Mary's  Church,  Brecon,  the  baptism 
certificate  of  Sarah  Kemble,  afterwards  Siddons. 
Apparently,  the  curate  was  not  sufficiently  interested  in  the 
strolling  Manager  to  set  down  his  name,  Roger  Kemble, 
correctly. 

Roger  Kemble's  eldest  child  was  born,  nine  days  before  her 
christening,  at  an  inn  in  Brecon  High  Street.  As  an  inn, 
the  Shoulder  of  Mutton  exists  no  longer.  The  same  building 
is  now  a  tavern — the  Siddons  Wine  Vaults — and,  thinly 
lettered  on  an  oblong  white  marble  tablet,  high  above  its 
licence  inscription,  is  just  legible — 

IN    THIS    HOUSE 

MRS.  SIDDONS 

WAS    BORN   JULY    5,    1/55 

The  '  Siddons  '  has  totally  lost  the  picturesque  appearance 
it  possesses  in  the  old  drawing  the  Rev.  Thomas  Price  sent 
Pleasures-of-Hope  Campbell  for  Mrs.  Siddons's  biography. 
The  gable  has  long  been  removed,  and  the  timbered  front 
buried  under  stucco.  Beyond  the  '  Siddons/  Brecon  may  be 
searched  in  vain  for  traces  of  the  divine  Sarah.  The  font  in 


2  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

which  she  was  baptized  was  turned  out  at  the  'restoration1 
of  St.  Mary's,  in  1858,  and  given  to  a  little  church  in  the 
neighbourhood,  Capel  St.  Illtyd.  The  back  door  of  the 
1  Siddoris '  opens  into  Church  Street,  through  which  the  baby 
was  probably  taken  to  the  north-west  door  of  St.  Mary's  for 
her  christening. 

The  county  that  also  cradled  Henry  Vaughan,  Sir  Bartle 
Frere,  and  Dr.  Bradley,  Dean  of  Westminster,  can  only  lay 
claim  to  the  most  intellectual  actress  who  ever  interpreted 
Shakespeare  by  the  accident  of  birthplace.  She  was  no  more 
a  Welshwoman  than  Swift  was  an  Irishman,  or  Garrick  a 
native  of  Hereford.  On  the  Wiltshire  border  of  Gloucester- 
shire, not  far  from  Widhill,  there  is  a  village  called  Kemble, 
and  from  that  district  living  members  of  the  Kemble  '  clan ' 
believe  the  family  to  have  sprung.  At  the  same  time,  the 
name  '  Kemble/  which  occurs  in  Domesday  Book,  and  is 
traceable  to  the  north  side  of  the  Loire,  supplies  another 
corroboration  of  the  popular  belief  that  for  genius  a  strain 
of  the  Kelt  is  needed.  Meanwhile,  Hereford  remains  the 
ascertainable  headquarters  of  Mrs.  Siddons's  near  progenitors. 

The  careers  of  renowned  players  are  apt  to  open  amid  an 
uproar  of  parental  objections,  but  Sarah  Kemble  was  bred 
for  the  stage  as  well  as  born  for  it.  Her  nursery  was  the 
improvised  greenroom  of  the  barn;  most  of  the  men  and 
women  who  caressed  or  ignored  her  were  players ;  as  soon 
as  she  could  commit  to  memory,  recite,  and  drop  a  curtsey,  she 
was  led  down  the  boards  by  her  mother  that  she  might  help 
to  boil  the  family  pot  by  her  baby  graces.  It  is  told  how, 
at  the  old  Brecon  Theatre,  on  some  very  early  occasion,  of 
date  not  recoverable,  when  an  audience  signified,  in  the  usual 
manner,  its  disapproval  of  the  entrance  of  so  infantile  a 
phenomenon,  Mrs.  Kemble,  adding  to  the  quick-wittedness 
of  the  public  performer  her  native  decision  of  character,  made 
the  mite  justify  herself  by  an  impromptu  delivery  of  an 
apposite  fable — c  The  Boy  and  the  Frogs/ 

"<5Tis  death  to  us,  though  sport  to  you, 
Unthinking,  cruel  boy  ! ' " 

tinkled  forth  little  Miss,  and    the    house    took    her  to  their 


AS   IT  WAS   IN   1755 


AS    IT    IS 

MRS.    SIDDONS'S   BIRTHPLACE 


, 


^ 


YOUNG  GIRLHOOD  3 

hearts.  A  certain  *  Petronius  Arbiter,  Esq./  alleges  of  one 
of  Mrs.  Siddons's  foremost  comic  contemporaries,  '  Betsey ' 
Farren,  that,  as  a  girl,  she  used  to  transport  the  drum  of  her 
travelling  troupe  from  place  to  place  on  her  head.  It  should  be 
explained  that,  to  save  handbill  expenditure,  the  strolling  com- 
panies announced  their  arrival  in  a  fresh  town  by  beat  of  drum, 
and  if,  as  stated,  the  youngest  lady  really  walked  under  the 
drum,  when  funds  were  too  low  for  van  hire,  it  is  not  impossible 
that  Reynolds's  Tragic  Muse  may  have  owed  something  of  the 
caryatid  poise  of  her  neck  to  this  utilitarian  exercise,  just  as 
Southern  peasant  women  owe  theirs  to  their  balanced  amphorae. 
Roger  Kemble  was  not  one  of  those  down-at-heel  beings, 
seedy  and  servile,  or  blue-nosed  and  raffish,  whom  we  call  up  at 
the  word  'stroller.'  Though  not  much  of  an  actor,  he  was 
blessed  with  a  sound  mind,  and  was  a  man  of  placid,  pleasant 
manners.  His  earnings  averaged  only  ^350  per  annum,  we 
are  to  judge  from  an  income  account  of  his,  preserved  by  the 
first  secretary  of  the  Garrick  Club,  and,  in  part,  printed  by  Mr. 
Fitzgerald  (Lives  of  the  Kembles,  ii.  68),  but  the  self-respect 
that  became  so  dominant  in  the  next  generation  was  well 
developed  in  him.  For  all  that  his  brother  was  a  barber  at 
Hereford  undenied,  and  he  himself  was  rumoured  to  have  cast 
aside  the  curling-irons  and  combs  to  'commence  actor/  he 
liked  to  link  himself  with  historic  ancestors,  with  Captain 
Richard  Kemble,  who  saved  the  life  of  Charles  II  by  giving  him 
his  horse  at  the  battle  of  Worcester,  and  with  the  Venerable 
Father  John  Kemble,  described  as  the  speaker's  great-grand- 
uncle  (after  whom  John  Philip  was,  partly,  it  may  be,  named), 
a  proscribed  priest,  hanged  in  Hereford,  his  county  town,  on 
August  22nd,  1679,  during  the  Gates  scare.  His  dismembered 
body  was  begged  by  Captain  Kemble,  who  buried  it  at  Welsh 
Newton,  and  thither,  ever  since,  on  every  22nd  of  August,  has 
fared  a  Catholic  Pilgrimage,  starting  from  Monmouth.  The 
hand  of  John  Kemble  is  preserved,  in  the  sacristy,  at  the  church 
of  St.  Francis  Xavier  at  Hereford,  and  a  piece  of  linen  dipped 
in  his  blood  is  at  Downside.  When  summoned  to  execution,  he 
asked  for  time  to  smoke  a  final  pipe.  No  actor  could  have 
shown  more  composure.  A  comparison  of  portraits  of  Roger 
Kemble  and  his  children  with  a  picture  derived  from  the  pen- 


4  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

and-ink  sketch  made  of  Father  Kemble,  in  1679,  by  the 
Governor  of  Hereford  Gaol,  shows  a  remarkable  facial  likeness, 
especially  as  to  the  long  '  Kemble '  nose. 

I  have  heard  descendants  of  the  Kemble  family  bewail  that 
their  efforts  to  trace  a  continuous  line  are  baffled  by  *  the  father- 
less Roger,'  i.e.  Roger  (l)  the  grandfather  of  Mrs.  Siddons.  If 
the  statement  be  correct  that  Father  John  Kemble's  nephew,  the 
above-mentioned  Captain  Richard  Kemble,  of  Pembridge  Castle, 
Welsh  Newton,  Herefordshire,  had  three  sons,  George,  Richard, 
and  Roger,  it  is  not  unthinkable  that  this  third  son,  Roger,  may 
have  been  father  of  'the  fatherless  Roger.'  Owing  to  the 
Kemble  family  having  been  '  recusant,'  no  parish  register  helps 
in  tracing  their  descent,  but  since,  in  days  of  Catholic  disabilities 
and  ruinous  fining,  it  was  inevitable  that  many  members  of 
Roman  Catholic  families  of  position  should  sink  in  the  social 
scale,  it  would  not  be  surprising  to  find  the  landowning  Captain 
Kemble's  direct  and  near  descendant,  first,  a  wig-maker,  and, 
afterwards,  a  vagrant  comedian.  "  Our  branch  of  the  family/' 
said  the  historian,  John  Mitchell  Kemble,  elder  son  of  Mrs. 
Siddons's  brother,  Charles,  "  descends  from  George  Kemble  of 
Pembridge  Castle,  as  I  have  often  heard  the  tradition  of  the 
family  to  be,  and  so  to  William  of  Wydell "  [Widhill]. 

I  have  before  me  a  Kemble  pedigree,  owned  by  Stephen 
Kemble's  eldest  grandson,  the  Rev.  N.  F.  Y.  Kemble,  wherein 
Roger's  immediate  associations  are  thus  specified  (see  opposite 
page). 

There  is,  it  must  freely  be  confessed,  such  a  preponderance 
of  uncertainty  in  establishing  any  family  links  above  Mrs. 
Siddons's  father,  that  the  late  Mr.  Knight  was,  for  summarizing 
purposes,  justified  in  his  designation  (in  the  Dictionary  of  National 
Biography]  of  this  Roger  as  '  head  of  the  Kemble  family.' 

While  the  fact  that  Mrs.  Siddons's  father  was,  in  a  mild 
way,  Roman  Catholic,  corroborated  his  kinship  with  the 
confessor,  Father  John,  his  solicitude  to  belong  to  somebody 
gave  accent  to  his  character.  From  his  miniature  portrait  in 
the  Stratford-upon-Avon  Memorial  Collection  we  see  that  Sarah 
was  featured  like  her  father.  The  straight,  long  nose  and  the 
air  of  dignity  came  from  him.  James  Boaden  thought  that 
Roger  and  his  children  strikingly  resembled  Charles  the  First, 


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6  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

but  Mrs.  Siddons  said  her  father  was  very  like  George  the 
Third,  and  it  is  hard  to  reconcile  the  two  kingly  likenesses. 
Boaden,  who  first  met  Roger  Kemble  when  he  was  old  enough 
to  have  'silver  curls/  found  him  sitting  in  his  son  John's 
library.  "  Our  introduction  to  each  other  was  at  once  simple 
and  expressive.  'This,  sir,  is  my  father.'  And,  to  the  old 
gentleman,  'Allow  me  to  present  to  you  my  friend,  Mr. 
Boaden.' "  Boaden  thus  inflates  the  simple  and  expressive  fact 
that  Roger  Kemble  was  wearing  a  skull-cap :  "  From  a  peculiar 
costume  that  he  had  adopted  from  the  liability  to  take  cold 
(a  partial  silk  covering  for  the  head,)  he  looked  to  me  rather 
like  a  dignitary  of  the  church  two  centuries  back,  than  a 
layman  of  the  present  age." 

In  common  with  most  of  the  other  actors  of  my  story, 
Roger  Kemble  had  the  good  sense  to  fix  his  affections  within 
the  profession.  His  wife  started  existence  as  Sarah  Ward. 
She  was  the  daughter  of  John  Ward,  another  strolling  Manager, 
of  whose  corps  Roger  was  a  member,  his  suit  being  for  some 
time  opposed  by  his  Sarah's  father.  The  opposition  was  on 
general,  not  personal,  grounds,  if  we  may  at  all  rely  on  this 
quaint  paragraph  from  the  Globe ,  December  3ist,  1807: — 

"  The  late  Mr.  Ward  made  a  solemn  vow  of  eternal  warfare 
against  his  daughter  should  she  marry  an  actor.  The  young 
lady  soon  after  married  Mr.  Kemble,  the  father  of  Mrs.  Siddons, 
a  gentleman  for  some  time  upon  the  stage.  '  Well,  my  dear 
child,  you  have  not  disobeyed  me,  the  d-v-1  himself  could  not 
make  an  actor  of  your  husband/  " 

Variants  of  this  story  occur  passim ;  unfortunately,  the 
pleasantry  is  sometimes  attributed,  not  to  Ward  re  Kemble, 
but  to  Kemble  re  Siddons. 

Ward,  who  had,  as  a  child,  played  under  Betterton,  was 
the  Manager  who,  at  Stratford,  in  1746,  gave  the  benefit  of 
Othello  towards  recolouring  the  chancel  bust  of  Shakespeare, 
a  large-minded  action  which,  indirectly,  led  'meddling'  Malone, 
in  horror  at  the  gaudy  pigments  employed,  to  take  up  his 
whiting  brush.  Like  his  son-in-law,  Ward  did  not  fulfil  the 
popular  notion  of  an  itinerant.  In  the  irresponsible  stage 
histories  of  his  day,  he  is  termed  an  Irishman — for  no  reason 
the  present  investigator  can  discover  beyond  the  facts  that  he 


YOUNG  GIRLHOOD  7 

once  acted  (with  Miss  Peg  Woffington)  at  the  Aungier  Street 
Theatre,  Dublin,  and  that  his  daughter  was  born  at  Clonmel. 
Actually,  he  and  his  family  were  well  known  locally  as  'the 
Wards  of  Leominster,'  at  Leominster  they  were  married  and 
buried,  while  Roger  Kemble,  who  '  inherited '  Ward's  company 
and  circuit,  made  all  his  professional  peregrinations  in  the  western 
midlands,  between  such  places  as  Coventry,  Warwick,  Worcester, 
Droitwich,  Bewdley,  Stourbridge,  Wolverhampton,  Shrewsbury, 
and  Ludlow,  with,  as  we  have  seen,  a  reach  across  the  marches 
of  Wales.  On  the  tomb,  dated  1773,  below  which  lie  Ward's 
bones, '  waiting  for  our  Saviour's  great  Assize '  (and  never  did 
an  epitaph  better  represent  the  Georgian  religious  tone),  the 
defunct  is  '  John  Ward,  Gent.'  Close  by  his  are  the  graves  of 
his  near  relatives,  Thomas  and  Humphrey  Ward,  the  first  a 
'sincere  Christian'  of  'talents  greatly  successful,'  the  second, 
and  earlier  (born,  1705),  something  more,  it  would  appear,  than 
technically  a  stroller,  since  his  inscription  reads, 

"Stop  traveller 

I've  past  and  repast  seas  and  distant  lands 
Can  find  no  rest  but  in  my  Saviour's  hands." 

Mrs.  Roger  Kemble  proved  herself  a  fine,  old-fashioned, 
Biblical  mother.  She  brought  her  husband  (as  the  phrase  was) 
four  sons  and  eight  girls.  The  girls,  according  to  the  rule  the  more 
insistent  religion  no  longer  tolerates,  were  bred  Protestants,  the 
boys  to  the  faith  of  their  father.  John  Philip  Kemble,  intended 
for  the  priesthood,  received  his  later  education  at  Douai,  in 
the  still  existing  English  Benedictines'  College  for  the  training 
of  English  priests, — it  had  been  the  ancestral  Father  Kemble's 
seminary, — and  thither,  at  John  Philip's  charges,  sixteen  years 
afterwards,  went  his  brother,  Charles. 

Circumlocutory  Boaden,  publishing  Mrs.  Siddons's  memoirs 
during  her  lifetime,  remarks :  "  Mrs.  Siddons,  I  have  always 
understood  to  be  senior  to  her  brother,  Mr.  Kemble,  by  two 
years."  John  was  born  in  Lancashire,  at  Prescott,  probably 
the  most  outlying  of  the  company's  pitches.  Charles,  the 
Kembles'  eleventh  and  penultimate  child,  and  the  only  other 
who  at  all  approached  Sarah  and  John  in  brain  power,  came 
into  the  world,  at  Brecon,  twenty  years  later  than  his  eldest 


8  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

sister.  The  entry  of  his  baptism,  too,  is  in  the  Register  of 
St.  Mary's  Church,  and  he  also  was  baptized  in  the  now  cast- 
out  font  It  is  noticeable  that  the  indisputable  genius  was  the 
eldest,  the  next  in  talent  the  second — an  instance  to  be  cited 
in  opposition  to  those  theorists  who  maintain  that  the  star  of 
a  large  family  always  comes  midway  in  the  list. 

Fortunately  for  her  player-husband,  Mrs.  Roger  Kemble 
was  a  woman  who  put  her  best  foot  foremost,  and  took  bulls  by 
their  horns.  'The  old  lioness,'  Lawrence,  who  painted  her 
portrait,  used  to  call  her,  anticipating  Thackeray's  '  grand  old 
lioness,'  to  describe  her  grandchild,  Fanny,  Charles  Kemble's 
elder  daughter,  who  believed  she  bore  a  strong  resemblance 
to  the  Kemble  grandmother  she  never  saw.  She,  by  the 
way,  suggested  that  Mrs.  Roger  was  a  Volumnia  of  real  life 
to  the  Coriolanus  of  her  son,  John,  to  whom,  quite  in  the  spirit 
of  this,  we  elsewhere  read  of  her  saying,  "  Sir,  you  are  as  proud 
as  Lucifer!" 

Mrs.  Kemble  instilled  into  Sarah  her  own  clear-cut  articu- 
lation— each  syllable  round  and  distinct ;  she  taught  her  singing 
and  the  harpsichord ;  she  vetoed  Roger's  engagement  of  an 
out-at-elbows  eccentric,  William  Combe,  the  future  author  of 
*  Dr.  Syntax/  to  coach  her  in  elocution.  She  was  no  dragger-up 
of  children,  but  a  vigorous,  purposeful,  probably  unimagi- 
native mere  de  famille.  She  died  in  1806,  aged  seventy-one. 
Roger  Kemble  died  in  1802,  aged  eighty-one.  They  both 
could  remember  having  acted  with  Quin. 

Kemble  and  his  wife  did  their  best  to  provide  the  two-thirds 
of  their  children  who  survived  the  perils  of  eighteenth-century 
infancy  with  all  the  schooling  attainable  in  untoward  circum- 
stances. Migratory  players'  families  were  as  liable  to  missing 
the  three  R's  as  canal  people's,  but  wherever  the  Kemble  cart 
made  a  protracted  halt  a  school  was  sought  out.  At  Worcester, 
a  Mrs.  Harris,  who  ruled  over  a  certain  Thornlea  House,  gave 
the  little  Sarah  lessons  free  of  charge.  Mrs.  Harris's  other 
young  ladies  were  prepared  to  make  the  stroller's  child  feel  her 
position,  but  her  magnificent  usefulness  on  an  occasion  of  school 
theatricals,  and  her  talent  for  improvising  sacque-backs  for  them 
all,  out  of  grocers'  stiff  sugar  paper,  converted  her  into  their 
heroine.  We  may  wonder  whether  the  day-girls  brought  her, 


ROGER  KEMBLE 


YOUNG  GIRLHOOD  9 

in  tribute,  those  'Worcester  fat  cakes'  of  which,  forty  years 
after,  she  fondly  remembered  she  '  could  have  eaten  half  a  dozen  ' 
at  a  sitting. 

This  Thornlea  House  note  is  one  of  the  only  two  attainable 
1  traits '  of  Mrs.  Siddons's  childhood.  The  other  is  in  a  different 
key,  and,  to  the  reader  disposed  to  take  more  interest  in  her  as 
a  human  character  than  as  an  actress,  will  appear  even  more 
significant  of  things  to  come.  It  narrates  how  she  retired  to 
rest  one  night,  so  absorbed  in  the  hope  of  '  a  pleasure  party ' 
next  day,  which  was  to  include  the  wearing  of  a  beatific, 
brand-new,  pink,  or,  as  they  said  then,  pink-coloured  gown  (the 
skirt  of  which,  circ.  1765,  we  may  picture  as  pleated  in  thickly 
round  a  long,  pointed  bodice),  that  she  took  with  her  to  bed  the 
Book  of  Common  Prayer  opened  at  the  Prayer  for  fair  Weather. 
At  dawn,  she  was  waked  by  a  deluge  against  her  window.  She 
looked  down  at  her  sortes.  The  Prayer  for  Rain  obstinately 
confronted  her.  Instead  of  tossing  the  talisman  out  of  bed,  she 
re-marked  the  petition  near  to  her  heart,  and  addressed  her 
again  to  sleep.  Her  next  experience  was  sunshine  at  rising 
and  the  pink-coloured  gown.  It  seems  singular  that  both  these 
glimpses  into  Mrs.  Siddons's  child-life  should  concern  clothes, 
seeing  that  she  eventually  became  a  careless  dresser.  We  can 
better  trace  in  her  renewed  trial  of  the  cross-grained  Prayer  Book 
a  foretaste  of  the  tenacity,  and,  also,  of  the  temperance — the 
composure — of  her  adult  character. 

There  can  hardly  be  another  instance  of  the  childhood  of  a 
genius  who  belongs  to  the  modern  world  which  offers  so  little 
as  Sarah  Kemble's  in  satisfaction  of  our  hunger  for  anecdote. 
What  is  not  an  anecdote,  but  illustrative,  all  the  same,  is  the 
record  of  the  early  commencement  of  her  lifelong  devotion  to 
Milton.  She  told  Campbell  that  when  she  was  ten  she  used 
to  pore  over  Paradise  Lost l  for  hours  together.'  It  is  pleasant  to 
think  of  the  serious  little  girl — this  Catholic  strolling  actor's 
child — responding  to  the  great  Puritan's  austere  elevation. 

By  the  time  she  was  eleven,  Sarah  was  playing  in  Shake- 
speare-£#w-Dryden  and  Davenant's  Tempest,  as  Ariel,  Chief 
Spirit ; l  in  Havard's  King  Charles  the  First,  as  the  young 

1  At  Worcester,  April  i6th,  1767,  Mrs.  Siddons's  first  recorded  Shakespearean 
appearance. 


io  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

Princess  Elizabeth;  in  English  operas,  such  as  Love  in  a 
Village,  in  which  she  played  Rosetta ;  in  Murphy's  Grecian 
Daughter,  where,  tradition  states,  she  laughed  at  the  supremely 
tragic  moment ;  and  in  The  Padlock •,  as  Leonora.  A  contributor 
to  Notes  and  Queries  of  April  5th,  1862,  speaks  of  having  seen 
a  playbill  of  the  theatre  at  Kington,  Hereford,  where  Roger  was 
Manager  (and  where,  in  1758,  his  son  Stephen  was  born),  "in 
which  the  famous  tragic  actress  is  advertised  to  take  the  part 
of  Patty  in  The  Maid  of  the  Mill."  The  apt  girl  was  juvenile 
lead  in  the  family  company,  and  no  longer  had  time  to  beat 
the  snuffers  against  the  candlestick  to  suggest  the  sound  that 
should  have  been  made  by  the  windmill  on  the  scene,  which, 
in  her  splendid  days,  Combe,  her  intercepted  professor,  talking 
to  Samuel  Rogers,  maliciously  emphasised  as  her  early  employ- 
ment. At  Wolverhampton,  Worcester,  and,  no  doubt,  elsewhere, 
Roger  Kemble  evaded  the  responsibility  of  conducting  a 
theatrical  entertainment  without  a  licence  by  the  celebrated 
advertisement  that  the  *  Concert ' — in  three  parts — was  free, 
but  that  'a  quantity  of  Tooth-powder  (from  London)'  was  to 
be  sold  at  various  agencies,  in  papers  at  2s.,  is.,  or  6d.  Very 
likely,  Sarah's  rosy  ringers  helped  to  do  up  those  chalk-filled 
packets. 

Lamb's  friend,  that  Cobbett-like  writer,  Thomas  Holcroft, 
was,  for  some  time,  an  assistant  in  the  Kemble  company. 
Holcroft 's  theatrical  experiences  occurred  midway  between  his 
nomadic  and  horsy  youth  and  his  play-writing  and  Radical 
maturity.  At  this  stage  of  his  career,  as  we  learn  from  John 
Bernard's  Retrospections  of  the  Stage,  he  knew  too  little  of  spelling 
and  grammar  to  write  a  passable  letter,  yet  his  self-confidence 
enabled  him  to  apply  '  for  an  engagement,  embracing  every 
good  part  in  the  cast-book.'  He  joined  the  Kembles  in  circum- 
stances calculated  to  prejudice  him  against  them.  He  had 
tramped,  hungry,  and,  as  the  phrase  went,  completely  minus, 
from  Leeds.  On  his  arrival  at  Hereford,  failing  to  find  the 
Manager,  upon  whose  delayed  letter  to  him  of  five  weeks  earlier 
he  had  undertaken  his  journey,  he  was  directed  to  Kemble's 
brother,  the  barber.  The  barber  and  the  barber's  wife  and 
family  were  all  indoors.  They  commented  on  his  faint  and 
broken  appearance,  suffered  him  to  tell  his  story,  and,  at  its 


YOUNG  GIRLHOOD  11 

conclusion,  did  not  even  offer  to  fill  him  out  a  glass  of  ale. 
This  meanness,  he  says  in  his  Memoir s>  made  '  Mr  Kemble's 
company  of  Comedians,'  when  they  heard  of  it,  'not  a  little 
incensed.' 

As  Holcroft  joined  the  Kembles  not  earlier  than  1771,  he 
may  never  have  acted  with  Mrs.  Siddons.  She  married  in  1773, 
and  thereupon  returned  to  the  company,  but  for  the  two 
previous  years  she  was  away  at  Guy's  Cliffe.  It  is  hardly 
thinkable  that,  had  he  acted  with  the  queen  rosebud,  Holcroft 
should  not,  later,  have  mentioned  the  fact.  His  reminiscences 
were  rather  with  the  inconspicuous  of  the  company,  and  concen- 
trated themselves  on  a  wastrel  named  Downing  or  Dunning, 
whose  trollopy  wife  habitually  stood  behind  the  scenes,  with  a 
powder-puff,  ready  to  rewhiten  her  George's  too  rubicund  nose 
each  time  he  came  off. 

Under  date  February  I2th,  1767,  the  playbill  of  King  Charles 
the  First,  at  the  Worcester  *  Theatre,' — a  stable  in  the  back  yard 
of  the  King's  Head  Inn,  opposite  the  Town  Hall, — contains  a 
line  of  anticipatory  interest : — 

"  Duke  of  Richmond,  Mr.  Siddons." 

Thus  early,  William  Siddons  (who  took  to  the  shifting  stage 
as  more  to  his  taste  than  being  a  barber's  apprentice,  his  first 
way  of  life)  was  a  member  of  Kemble's  company.  Not  till  three 
years  later  did  he  stand  confessed  as  a  serious  soupirant  for  the 
Manager's  lovely  daughter. 

Siddons  was  a  Walsall  man.  Mr.  Joseph  Hall,  of  Perry 
Bar,  has  discovered  for  me,  at  St.  Matthew's  (the  parish  church), 
Walsall,  his  baptismal  entry,  as  follows : — 

"  1744.     Sept.  24.  William  Siddons  son  of  Joseph" 

In  vol.  ii.  (published  1801)  of  the  Rev.  Stebbing  Shaw's 
History  and  Antiquities  of  Staffordshire^  under  'Walsall,'  we 
read  that  William  Siddons's  father  kept  a  public-house  (the 
1  London  Apprentice ')  in  Rushall  Street,  "  and  met  with  his 
death  in  sparring  or  wrestling  with  one  Denston."  The  future 
husband  of  England's  greatest  actress  is  first  heard  of,  theatri- 
cally, as  performing,  as  an  amateur,  in  1766,  in  a  play,  'in  the 
malt-house  of  Mr.  Samuel  Wood  on  the  Lime-pit  bank,'  Walsall. 
The  name  '  Siddons '  is  extant  in  Birmingham,  Oundle,  and 
Wellingborough. 


12  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

As  we  know,  Sarah  returned  William's  flame.  Only  less 
remarkable  than  the  slow  development  of  her  art  was  the  pre- 
cociousness  of  her  womanly  maturity.  Bohemian  circumstances 
joined  to  a  familiar  acquaintance  with  the  speech  of  heroines 
make  a  girl  a  Juliet.  She  engaged  herself  to  Siddons  when  she 
was  sixteen.  He  was  eleven  years  older. 

Sarah  Siddons's  first  love-affair  was  the  love-affair  of  her  life. 
She  was  too  young  wooed  and  too  early  married  to  have  had 
much  previous  time  for  the  occupation  later  known  in  her  own 
domestic  circle  as  conquest-making,  but  the  characteristic  fact 
is  that — actress,  popular  idol,  beautiful  woman  though  she  was, 
she  never,  after  marriage,  drifted  into  attachment  to  any  one  of 
the  various  men  who  might  so  easily  have  come  to  interest  her 
more  than  Siddons.  From  being  a  maid  she  became  a  matron, 
but  as  for  embroideries  on  either  theme,  would  as  soon  have 
taken  up  with  morpho-mania.  Acting  and  the  austere  joys  of 
maternity  were  the  all-sufficient  emotional  outlets  of  this  rarely 
constituted  woman-artist.  The  little  development  in  her  of  the 
sexual  element  is  a  most  noteworthy  fact,  seeing  that  a  great 
actress,  a  great  courtesan,  is  the  generalisation  to  which 
theatrical  history  largely  leads.  To  be  a  great  actress,  most 
people  would  say,  a  woman  must  be  plus  femme  que  les  autre* 
femmes.  The  constant  display  and  constantly  realised  effect  of 
personal  charms,  the  perpetual,  high-wrought  emotionalism, 
what  the  late  Mr.  Marion  Crawford  termed  the  'overpowering 
familiarities '  of  the  stage,  all  point  one  way.  Yet,  to  this  force- 
ful stream  of  tendency  Mrs.  Siddons  was  a  grand  exception.  Of 
the  libertinism  which  so  often  accompanies  the  artist  that  it 
seems  almost  a  necessary  element  in  genius  she  knew  nothing. 
It  was  only  a  Glasgow  enthusiast,  ignorant  of  everything  but 
the  effect  on  his  nerves  of  her  acting,  who  could  say  of  her, 
"  She  is  a  fallen  angel ! "  At  the  farthest  remove  from  the  more 
or  less  typical  La  Faustin  of  Edmond  de  Goncourt,  she  presents, 
indeed,  a  curious  and  instructive  phenomenon,  i.e.  a  woman  of 
essentially  Puritan  nature,  into  which  genius,  that  mighty  wind, 
blowing  where  it  listeth,  inspired  an  unparalleled  gift  for  acting. 

The  girl's  course  of  love  did  not  run  smooth.  Siddons  was 
handsome  and  looked  quite  the  gentleman,  and,  by  virtue  of 
these  qualifications,  played  utility  in  Kemble's  company — 


YOUNG  GIRLHOOD  13 

Seneca  was  not  too  heavy,  nor  Plautus  too  light.  He  possessed 
another  useful  asset  in  that  he  had  a  particularly  quick  study. 
He  could  cram  any  part,  however  long,  and  be  '  rotten  perfect ' 
in  a  day.  Beyond  these  three  points  in  his  favour,  he  had 
nothing  to  offer,  and  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Kemble  took  no  joy  in  an 
engagement  they  did  not  well  know  how  to  prevent  between 
their  unpractised  young  beauty  and  this  moneyless  swain. 
Had  they  recognised  in  him  any  promise  of  a  second  Powell, 
or  a  second  '  Gentleman '  Smith,  they  might  have  taken  heart, 
but  they  knew  too  much  about  acting  for  that.  He,  mean- 
while, deep  in  love,  did  not  trouble  about  the  misgivings  of 
his  fair  one's  encumbrances. 

At  this  juncture,  there  emerged  out  of  a  cloud  of  Brecon- 
shire  admirers,  one,  Mr.  Evans,  with,  it  was  understood,  the 
proposals  of  a  solid  and  eligible  passion.  In  Brecon,  the 
general  opinion  was  that  he  had  been  bowled  over  by  Sarah's 
rendering  of  Leonora's  song  to  her  bird  in  The  Padlock — 

"No,  no,  no, 

Sweet  Robin,  you  shall  not  go ; 
Where,  you  wanton,  could  you  be 
Half  so  happy  as  with  me?" 

Evans  belonged,  in  a  small  way,  to  the  landed  class.  He 
had  £300  a  year,  and  was  designated  Squire  of  Pennant. 
Upon  his  appearance,  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Kemble  must  be  supposed 
to  have  given  their  daughter  a  vivid  sketch  of  the  difference 
between  ^300  a  year  certain  and  nothing  a  year  certain,  for 
Siddons,  fearing  the  worst,  proposed  elopement.  Sarah  char- 
acteristically declined  such  a  step.  The  dimness  that  veils 
every  incident  of  her  youth  here  becomes  opaque,  and  it  is 
impossible  to  know  whether,  at  this  point,  she  did  not  waver  in 
favour  of  Evans.  At  least,  Siddons  thought  she  did.  Bitter- 
ness overflowed  his  heart,  and  he  rushed  to  her  parents,  and 
expressed  with  freedom  what  he  thought  of  them.  In  reply, 
Kemble  gave  him  notice,  tempering  the  dismissal  by  allowing 
him  a  farewell  benefit. 

Siddons  retired  to  meditate  an  immense  revenge.  It  took 
the  form  of  an  entr'acte  imprfou,  composed  by  himself.  This 
he  delivered  at  the  above-mentioned  benefit  (which  proved  a 
bumper)  between  the  play  and  the  farce.  We  owe  the  disinter- 


14  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

ment  of  the  words  of  Siddons's  '  song '  to  '  Carnhuanawc  '  Price, 
who  delivered  them  to  the  delighted  Campbell,  who  said  they 
were  worth  their  weight  in  five-pound  notes.  They,  at  any  rate, 
showed  that  Siddons  had  a  long  way  yet  to  go  before  he  could 
behave  like  the  gentleman  he  looked.  They  commenced, 

"Ye  ladies  of  Brecon,  whose  hearts  ever  feel 
For  wrongs  like  to  this  I'm  about  to  reveal : 
Excuse  the  first  product,  nor  pass  unregarded 
The  complaints  of  poor  Colin,  a  lover  discarded. 

"At  length  the  report  [of  Squire  Evans's  adoration]  reach'd  the 

ears  of  his  flame, 

Whose  nature  he  fear'd  from  the  source  whence  it  came ; 
She  acquainted  her  ma'a,  who,  her  ends  to  obtain, 
Determin'd  poor  Colin  to  drive  from  the  plain." 

There  were  nine  more  verses,  and  they  all  rhymed.  Through- 
out his  life,  Siddons  had  a  readiness  at  vers  d 'occasion. 

The  canticle  was  in  egregiously  bad  taste,  but  poor  Colin, 
standing  down  at  the  floats,  with,  we  may  be  sure,  his  fair  face 
deeply  flushed  with  agitation,  was  in  earnest.  Sentiment,  per- 
secuted by  worldly  wisdom,  is  a  safe  theatrical  stop,  and  the 
Breconians,  already  hugely  interested  in  the  affair,  and  with  all 
an  audience's  fine  carelessness  as  to  a  matter  touching  them- 
selves so  little  as  the  financial  irresponsibility  of  an  actress's 
would-be  husband,  applauded  him  vociferously.  But,  as  Colin 
went  off  the  stage,  trailing  clouds  of  glory,  an  anticlimax 
occurred.  Mrs.  Kemble  met  him  at  the  greenroom  door,  and 
Colin  was  clouted.  Boxing  ears  was,  at  that  period,  the 
recognised  expression  of  feminine  disapprobation. 

The  fact  of  Siddons  being  thus  finally  presented  with  the 
key  of  the  street  either  did  nothing  to  encourage  the  Squire  of 
Pennant  Sarah's  Protestant  to  be,  or,  if  it  did,  he  was  refused. 
Mrs.  Kennard  thinks  Sarah  was  unnaturally  tolerant  in  clinging 
to  a  sweetheart  who  had  sung  concerning  her 

"  a  jilt  is  the  devil,  as  has  long  been  confess'd, 
Which  a  heart  like  poor  Colin's  must  ever  detest," 

but,  clearly,  she  forgave  him  for  the  excellent  reason  that  love 
for  her  had  turned  his  brain — amantes,  amentes.  We  others 
may  rejoice  that,  by  remaining  staunch  to  her  poor  player, 


YOUNG  GIRLHOOD  15 

instead  of  showing  herself  a  girl  of  spirit,  she  was  not  untimely 
torn  from  her  vocation  as  the  queen  of  tragedy  to  become 
instead  a  queen  of  curds  and  cream,  as  wife  to  an  agricultural 
Welshman. 

No  doubt,  there  were  tears,  headaches,  and  words.  It  ended, 
for  the  time  being,  in  Sarah's  accepting  a  situation,  at  £10  a 
year,  in  the  service  of  Lady  Mary  Greatheed,  of  Guy's  Cliffe, 
Warwick.  The  engagement  between  herself  and  her  sweet 
William  was  ratified.  Her  parents,  though  retiring  in  good 
order,  had  been  beaten.  Such  is  nature's  kindly  law. 

Lady  Mary  Greatheed,  the  widow  of  Samuel  Greatheed, 
M.P.  for  Coventry  (ob.  1765),  was  born  Lady  Mary  Bertie,  a 
daughter  of  Peregrine,  second  Duke  of  Ancaster.  Her  son,  Bertie 
Greatheed,  was  eleven  in  1771.  It  was  this  son's  granddaughter, 
Anne  Caroline  Greatheed,  whose  marriage,  in  1823,  with  Lord 
Charles  Percy,  son  of  the  first  Earl  of  Beverley,  eventually 
brought  the  Guy's  Cliffe  property  into  the  hands  of  its  present 
owner,  the  Duke  of  Northumberland's  brother,  Lord  Algernon 
Percy,  to  whose  kindness  in  showing  me  various  Kemble  relics 
and  pictures  I  am  much  indebted.  It  remains  hard  to  say 
precisely  what  duties  Sarah  Kemble  was  originally  engaged  to 
fulfil  in  the  Greatheed  household.  In  the  family  to-day  it  is 
believed  that  her  employment  was  that  of  reader,  or  companion- 
reader,  and,  in  all  probability,  it  was  into  the  congenial 
specialty  of  reading  aloud  that  she  drifted ;  but,  in  view  of  the 
fact  that  Bertie  Greatheed  told  Miss  Williams  Wynn  he  had 
'  been  in  the  habit  of  hearing  Mrs.  Siddons  read  Macbeth  even 
from  the  period  of  her  being  his  mother's  maid,'  we  may  perhaps 
suppose  that  she  entered  on  her  duties  in  the  elastic  capacity  of 
maid-companion,  but  that  her  brains  and  refinement  soon  caused 
the  companion  to  predominate  over  the  tirewoman.  We  know 
that  she  constantly  read  her  beloved  Milton  to  the  Greatheeds, 
and  we  can  guess  what  a  brave  new  world  their  many  books 
opened  to  her.  Not  the  least  interesting  of  the  few  records  of 
this  early  connection  of  hers  with  Guy's  Cliffe  is  a  remark  Lady 
Mary  Greatheed  made  to  '  Conversation '  Sharp  to  the  effect 
that  she  used  always  to  feel  an  irresistible  inclination  to  rise 
from  her  chair  when  her  queenly-looking  dependent  entered  the 
room.  The  Duchess  of  Ancaster  told  the  Rev.  John  Genest 


16  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

that,  when  Lady  Mary  stayed  with  her  in  Lincolnshire,  she 
brought  Mrs.  Siddons  with  her,  and  the  ci-devant  young  actress 
"  was  fond  of  spouting  in  the  servants'  hall."  The  third  Duke, 
then  Lord  Brownlow  Bertie,  used  to  listen  to  her,  and  used, 
also,  presumably,  to  bring  enthusiastic  reports  into  the  drawing- 
room,  for  Lady  Mary  said,  "  Brother,  don't  encourage  the  girl, 
you  will  make  her  go  on  the  stage." 

It  is  interesting  to  speculate  on  what  so  impossible  a  '  young 
female '  as  Sarah  Kemble  learnt  from  the  serene  orderliness  of 
her  surroundings  at  Lady  Mary's.  The  glitter  of  the  table 
silver  must  have  meant  a  new  standpoint,  the  mouldings  of  the 
doors  should  have  been  a  liberal  education.  There  was  much 
in  her  temperament  that  responded  to  the  new  atmosphere,  and, 
while,  in  years  to  come,  she  was  to  grow  intimately  familiar 
with  many  of  the  stately  homes  of  England,  now,  manifestations 
of  wealth  and  taste  and  high  position  were  rendered  trebly 
telling  by  their  contrast  to  the  scrambling  existence — sordid 
lodgings,  ill-bred  associates,  and  many  mortifications — that 
made  up,  not  only  life's  daily  portion  in  a  strolling  Manager's 
family,  but  all  she  had  hitherto  known  of  the  world. 

Of  the  romantic  beauty  of  the  Guy's  Cliffe  estate  many  a 
better  poet  had  sung  before  that  genuine  admirer  of  '  elegant 
nature,'  the  Rev.  Richard  Jago,  who  visited  at  the  house 
during  Mrs.  Siddons's  period,  discovered  that 

"Here  the  calm  scene  lulls  the  tempestuous  breast 
To  sweet  composure." 

At  this  *  Place  meet  for  the  Muses/1  in  1772,  Miss  Kemble 
may  well  have  sat  at  a  mullioned  upper  window,  as  she  did, 
thirty  years  later,  at  Conway  Castle — there,  too,  the  river, 
beneath, '  glowing  in  the  balmy  sunshine — till  [the  quoted  words 
are  from  her  devoted  Patty  Wilkinson's  travel  diary]  she 
seemed  absorbed  in  a  luxuriant  reverie.'  The  thoughts  of  youth 
are  long,  long  thoughts,  and  Sarah's  at  Guy's  Cliffe  were  a 
chaos  of  simmering  artistic  impulses  blent  with  tenderness  for 
a  man,  whom  she  saw  on  a  glorified  plane,  as  actors  are  seen 
across  the  lamps.  So  foolish  is  a  girl  that  one  must  be  certainly 
right  in  imagining  that  Sarah's  happiest  moments  in  this 
1  So  Leland  described  Guy's  Cliffe  (The  Itinerary,  iv.  Part  the  Second). 


-sb 


GUY'S  CLIFFE 


YOUNG  GIRLHOOD  17 

picturesque  place  were  when  Siddons  (entering  by  the  back  door) 
came  to  visit  her,  and  they  could  stroll  to  the  mill,  or,  under  the 
great  cedars,  to  Guy's  Cave  above  the  mirroring  Avon,  and 
laugh  over  their  ancient  misunderstanding,  and  drink  together 
at  the  wishing  spring  to  the  golden  age,  ahead,  of  mutual 
happiness  one  and  indivisible. 

About  two  years  passed  before  the  day  arrived  when  Sarah 
bade  a  respectful  farewell  to  the  mistress  who  had  treated  her  with 
uniformly  cordial  encouragement.  Little  could  either  foresee 
how,  within  a  comparatively  brief  period,  relative  positions 
would  alter,  and  how  the  heir  of  that  lordly  house  would,  one 
day,  tremblingly  offer  his  tragedy  to  '  his  mother's  maid,'  and  be 
described  by  her  as  the  '  poor  young  man.' 

On  November  26th,  1773,  William  Siddons  and  Sarah 
Kemble,  the  latter  then  eighteen,  became,  in  Sir  Peter  Teazle's 
phrase,  involved  in  matrimony.  The  ceremony  took  place  in 
Trinity  Church,  Coventry  ;  Roger  gave  his  daughter  away ;  and, 
no  doubt,  the  pew-opener  agreed  with  the  clerk  that  the  bride 
and  bridegroom  were  an  uncommonly  well-matched  couple. 

No  unobstructed  horizon  lay  before  Sarah  and  her  *  Sid.1 
It  was  arranged  that,  at  any  rate  for  awhile,  they  should  both 
resume  work  on  the  Kemble  circuit,  and  Sarah  was,  for  the 
first  time,  announced  as  '  Mrs.  Siddons/  on  a  Worcester  playbill, 
December  I3th,  1773. 


II 

FALSE   DAWN 

IN  the  spring  of  1775,  Mrs.  Siddons  was  acting,  with 
Younger's  company,  in  Liverpool.  "  Have  you  ever 
heard,"  inquired  Garrick,  writing,  in  April,  to  the  ideal 
stage  Irishman,  John  Moody,  at  Liverpool,  "of  a  woman 
Siddons,  who  is  strolling  about  somewhere  near  you  ?  " 

To  be  continually  on  the  look-out  for  new  blood  is  part  of 
the  art  of  Management,  and  Garrick  had  his  spies  and  critics 
always  ready  to  run  down,  sometimes  to  unlikely  places,  to 
report  on  the  likely  article.  There  was  a  William  Stone  at 
Drury  Lane  Theatre  whom  he  so  habitually  employed  in 
recruiting  about  London  for  subordinate  actors  that  the 
fellow  acquired  the  sobriquet  of  The  Theatrical  Crimp.  The 
same  office,  in  a  higher  walk,  was  fulfilled  by  several  people. 

Garrick  had  first  heard  the  name  of  the  '  woman  Siddons ' 
from  the  Countess  of  Albany's  cousin,  Lord  Bruce,  in  1776 
created  Earl  of  Ailesbury.  In  1774,  the  married  adventurers, 
William  and  Sarah  Siddons,  were  acting  at  Cheltenham  Wells, 
during  the  water-drinking  season,  with  Chamberlain  and  Crump's 
company,  of  which  Siddons  appears  to  have  been,  at  the  time, 
part  Manager.  Their  appointments  were,  in  all  probability, 
extremely  humble.  When  that  extraordinary  creature,  '  Becky ' 
Wells,  played  a  star  engagement  at  Cheltenham,  in  1789,  she 
descanted  on  the  contrast  between  that  and  her  former 
theatrical  visit  there;  then,  she  had  arrayed  herself  for  Juliet 
in  an  actresses'  dressing-room  only  divided  from  the  actors'  by 
a  torn  blanket. 

One  evening,  Lord  Bruce  and  his  stepdaughter,  the  Hon. 
Henrietta  Boyle,  turned  in  to  the  Cheltenham  Theatre  in  a 
mood  of  indulgent  good  humour.  The  play  was  Otway's 


FALSE  DAWN  19 

Venice  Preserved,  and  the  well-versed  pair  expected,  at  best, 
to  enjoy  a  suppressed  smile  out  of  the  antics  and  mouthings 
of  the  poor  creatures  behind  the  floats.  They  proved  them- 
selves unprejudiced  enough  to  acknowledge  a  good  thing  when 
they  found  it.  Indeed,  Miss  Boyle  cried  so  hard  over  the  pathos 
and  tenderness  of  one  young  tragedienne,  Siddons  by  name,  that 
the  sound  of  her  sobs  convinced  that  sensitive  actress  she  was 
being  tittered  at,  and  sent  her  home  in  an  agony  of  vexation. 

Next  morning,  Lord  Bruce,  walking  in  Cheltenham,  met 
William  Siddons.  He  bowed  to  the  actor,  and  then  accosted 
him,  actors  being  public  property,  with  a  few  well-chosen  words 
of  compliment — and  what  words  of  compliment  from  a  noble 
lord  would  have  seemed  other  than  well-chosen? — on  Mrs. 
Siddons's  beautiful  acting,  after  which  he  begged  for  his 
daughter  the  pleasure  of  waiting  on  Mrs.  Siddons  at  her 
lodgings.  Quick  and  self-reliant,  Miss  Boyle  at  once  discovered 
that,  under  the  shabby  surroundings  of  this  obscure  premiere, 
she  had  lighted  upon  a  lady  in  grain.'  The  two  made  friends. 
Mrs.  Siddons — I  quote  a  serious  work  on  the  girlhood  of 
extraordinary  women,  published  in  1857 — "was  naturally 
greatly  lifted  up  by  the  praise  of  honourable  and  noble  persons, 
whose  rank  was  a  sure  guarantee  of  the  soundness  of  their 
judgment."  Miss  Boyle  lent  Mrs.  Siddons  finery,  imparted  the 
latest  ideas  on  chiffons,  herself  ran  together  stage-costume 
adornments.  When  next  in  London,  Lord  Bruce  took  an 
opportunity  of  naming  their  Cheltenham  Belvidera  to  Garrick, 
as  a  diamond  in  a  dust-heap,  a  dove  trooping  with  crows.  We 
know  enough  of  him  whom  friends  called  the  great  little  man, 
and  enemies  the  little  great  man,  to  be  sure  that  the  fact  that 
she  had  been  recommended  by  a  peer  engraved  all  the  more 
deeply  the  new  name  of  Siddons  in  Garrick's  mental  notebook. 
As  a  newspaper  correspondent  phrases  it,  writing,  in  1823,  to 
the  editor  of  the  Courier,  "  The  late  Earl  of  Aylesbury  excited 
Garrick's  earnest  attention." 

For  all  his  charming  deference  to  aristocratic  acquaintances, 
our  David  was  not  the  man  to  rely  for  a  final  artistic  opinion, 
involving  his  subsequent  cash  and  credit,  on  any  one  but  him- 
self, or  another  stage  expert.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  and  without 
counting  Moody,  referred  to  above,  he  employed  two  experts 


20  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

on  the  Siddons  quest.  One  was  Tom  King,  who  saw  her,  at 
Cheltenham,  as  Calista,  in  Rowe's  The  Fair  Penitent,  and  re- 
ported enthusiastically.  The  other  was  the  Rev.  Henry  Bate, 
who  did  not  see  her  till  some  months  later,  when  Garrick  was 
sighing  for  a  new  sultana  to  correct  the  caprices  of  Mesdames 
Abington,  Yates,  and  Younge. 

Parson  Bate,  J.P.,  M.F.H.,  who  edited  the  Morning  Post,  and 
was,  as  the  ever  delightful  Boaden  remarks, '  lay  in  his  manners,' 
has  never  been  accused  of  lacking  brains,  and  the  two  letters  he 
wrote  to  Garrick,  on  August  1 2th  and  ipth,  1775,  from  the  Hop- 
pole,  Worcester,  giving  his  impressions  of  Mrs.  Siddons's  extra- 
ordinariness  and  Mr.  Siddons's  ordinariness,  are  much  to  the 
point.  He  was  accompanied  on  his  quest  by  Mrs.  Bate, '  whose 
judgment  in  theatrical  matters/  he  writes,  he  has  '  a  high  opinion 
of/  This  was  the  lady  of  whom  Gainsborough  made  the 
portrait  (Lady  Bate  Dudley]  which,  lent  by  the  late  Lord  Burton, 
formed  one  of  the  greater  glories  of  the  British  Fine  Art  Section 
in  the  Franco-British  Exhibition,  1908.  Her  husband's  portrait, 
by  Gainsborough,  hangs  in  Room  XX  of  the  National  Gallery. 

Bate  tells  Garrick  that  Mrs.  Siddons — as  Rosalind — was  not 
only  beautiful  and  original  (yet  tempered  by  an  unremitting  re- 
gard for  the  moderation  of  nature)  but  that '  in  the  latter  humbug 
scene  with  Orlando'  she  '  did  more  with  it '  than  any  one  he  ever 
saw,  '  not  even  your  divine  Mrs.  Barry  excepted.'  Truth  compels 
him  to  say  he  thought  her  voice  dissonant,  even  grating ;  he  is, 
at  the  same  time,  inclined  to  think  this  only  an  error  of  affecta- 
tion, for  he  '  found  it  wear  away  as  the  business  became  more 
interesting/  So  conquered  is  the  critic  that  he  goes  on,  "  I 
should  not  wonder,  from  her  ease,  figure,  and  manner,  if  she 
made  the  proudest  she  of  either  house  tremble  in  genteel 
comedy — nay,  beware  yourself,  Great  Little  Man,  for  she  plays 
Hamlet  to  the  satisfaction  of  the  Worcestershire  critics."  He 
adds  that,  as  there  must  be  no  thought  of  not  engaging  her,  he 
has  taken  the  initial  steps,  since  he  c  learnt  that  some  of  the 
Covent  Garden  Mohawks  were  intrenched  near  the  place,  and 
intended  carrying  her  by  surprise.'  He  says  that  the  couple 
are  eagerly  ready  to  put  themselves  under  Garrick's  protection, 
but  that  the  lady  'declined  proposing  any  terms,  leaving  it 
entirely  with  you/  Bate  winds  up  by  apologising  for  having 


FALSE  DAWN  21 

written,  he  supposes,  'a  damned  jargon  of  unintelligible  stuff 
in  haste.' 

Garrick's  reply — which  I  have  only  seen  in  print,  as  a 
newspaper  cutting  from  an  ancient  number  of  the  Courier — 
is,  for  its  writer's  sake  and  its  rarity,  worth  transcribing.  I 
omit  two  or  three  sentences,  in  which  Roscius  inquires,  in 
terms  too  unmuffled  for  modern  eyes,  concerning  Mrs.  Siddons's 
approaching  confinement  (her  first  child,  Henry,  was  now  ten 
months  old),  desiring  to  know  at  what  date  she  will  again  be 
1  fit  for  service.' 

"HAMPTON,  August  15,  1775 

"DEAR  BATE, — Ten  thousand  thanks  for  your  very  clear, 
agreeable,  and  friendly  letter :  it  pleased  me  much,  and  who- 
ever calls  it  a  jargon  of  unintelligible  stuff,  should  be  knocked 
down  if  I  were  near  him.  I  must  desire  you  to  secure  the 
lady,  with  my  best  compliments,  and  that  she  may  depend 
upon  every  reasonable  encouragement  in  my  power;  at  the 
same  time,  you  must  intimate  to  the  husband,  that  he  must 
be  satisfied  with  the  State  of  life  in  which  it  has  pleased  Heaven 
to  call  her.  .  .  .  Should  not  you  get  some  memorandum  signed 
by  her  and  her  husband,  and  of  which  I  will  send  a  fac-simile 
copy  to  them,  and  a  frank,  if  you  will  let  me  know  their  address. 

"  I  laughed  at  the  military  stratagems  of  the  Covent  Garden 
Generals,  whilst  I  had  your  genius  to  [  ?  ]  them.  If  she  has 
merit  (as  I  am  sure  by  your  letter  she  must  have)  and  will 
be  wholly  governed  by  me,  I  will  make  her  theatrical  fortune ; 
if  any  lady  begins  to  play  tricks,  I  will  immediately  play  off 
my  masked  battery  of  Siddons  against  her.  I  should  be  glad 
to  know  her  cast  of  parts,  or  rather  what  parts  she  has  done, 
and  in  what  she  likes  herself  best.  Those  I  would  have 
marked  .  .  . 

"  I  am,  my  dear  Farmer,1  most  sincerely  yours, 

"D.  GARRICK" 

Four  days  later,  Bate  sent  Garrick  a  list  of  Mrs.  Siddons's 
twenty-three  leading  characters.  Of  the  seven  she  herself 
preferred,  three  were  tragic,  and  four  comic.  Among  the 
latter  were  Portia  and  Rosalind.  She  did  not  mark  her  two 
tragic  Shakespearean  parts,  Juliet  and  Cordelia.  Bate  added, 
"  It  would  be  unjust  not  to  remark  one  circumstance  in  favour 
of  them  both ;  I  mean  the  universal  good  character  they  have 
1  In  reference  to  Bate's  agricultural  proclivities. 


22  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

preserved  here."  In  a  postscript,  he  subjoins,  "  She  is  the  most 
extraordinary  quick  study  I  ever  heard  of." 

The  negotiations  went  forward.  The  Siddonses  gave 
notice  at  their  headquarters.  Garrick  advanced  money  to 
tide  them  over  the  forthcoming  illness  and  any  short  period 
in  London  before  appearance. 

None  of  the  Garrick-Bate  letters  appear  in  The  Private 
Correspondence  of  David  Garrick,  edited  by  Boaden  in  1831. 
The  only  document  bearing  on  the  transaction  to  be  found 
there  is  a  letter  to  William  Siddons,  dated  December  I3th, 
1775,  from  John  de  la  Bere,  reporting  to  him  the  indignation 
of  '  Mr.  Blackwell '  and  '  the  gentlemen  of  Covent-garden 
theatre'  at  Mrs.  Siddons's  having  engaged  herself  to  Garrick 
after  having  been  previously  in  treaty  with  them  for  the 
latter  part  of  the  winter  season.  "  They  consider  her  subse- 
quent engagement  to  Mr.  Garrick  as  an  infringement  of  the 
agreement  subsisting  between  them  and  Drury-lane."  From 
this  it  would  appear  that  some  sort  of  stipulation  existed 
between  the  two  *  Winter  Theatres '  (i.e.  Drury  Lane  and 
Covent  Garden)  as  to  not  infringing  on  each  other's  overtures 
to  actors  while  such  overtures  were  proceeding.  The  letter 
concludes :  "  I  have  only  to  recommend  it  to  your  consideration, 
whether  you  will  not,  on  the  footing  of  the  agreement  between 
the  two  houses,  lose  the  chance  of  getting  into  either,  and  to 
add  that  Mr.  Blackwell  has  taken  up  this  affair  with  great 
resolution,  on  the  part  of  Covent-garden,  and  he  says  that 
Mrs.  Siddons  absolutely  promised  him  to  drop  all  thoughts 
of  connecting  herself  with  Drury-lane."  Clearly,  Mrs. 
Siddons's  acting  had  made  a  sensation,  and,  equally  clearly, 
the  Siddons  pair  had  not  been  guiltless  of  sitting  on  the 
fence  between  the  Lane  and  the  Garden. 

It  had  been  calculated  that  Mrs.  Siddons  would  be  '  fit  for 
service'  early  in  December,  and,  on  November  9th,  her 
husband  acquainted  their  prospective  employer  that,  on  the 
5th  inst.,  she  had  'produc'd  him  a  fine  girl.'  The  twenty-year- 
old  wage-earner  was  taken  ill  while  acting,  at  Gloucester,  a 
few  hours  previously.  Had  a  longer  reposeful  time  followed, 
the  story  of  her  first  siege  of  London  might  possibly  have 
been  other  than  it  was. 


FALSE  DAWN  23 

The  two  probationers,  accompanied  by  two  babies  '  off  their 
feet/  little  Henry  and  the  *  fine  girl/  Sarah  Martha — later,  the 
'  Sally '  Siddons  of  a  tragic  real-life  story — reached  London 
before  the  middle  of  December.  Mrs.  Siddons  felt  she  was 
on  the  first  rung  of  the  ladder.  The  agreement  was  informal, 
but  Garrick  promised  her  five  pounds  a  week,  a  salary  which, 
before  she  began  to  draw  it,  must  have  appeared  to  her  a 
Golconda.  Unfortunately,  more  than  a  third  of  the  season 
was  over. 

Boaden  tells  a  weak-kneed  story  to  the  effect  that,  prior 
to  her  marriage,  she  had  journeyed  to  London,  and  recited 
to  Garrick  from  Rowe's  tragedy,  Jane  Shore.  This  statement 
is  uncorroborated,  and,  as  to  date,  improbable.  Quite  possibly, 
now,  on  her  enrolment  in  his  corps,  the  patentee,  at  their 
initial  meeting,  asked  for  a  taste  of  her  quality,  and  was  given 
some  speeches  of  Jane  Shore's  or  Alicia's.  It  would  be  hard 
to  imagine  a  prettier  subject  for  a  genre  painting  than  the  first 
interview  between  Mrs.  Siddons  and  Garrick. 

"  His  praises  were  most  liberally  conferred  upon  me,"  wrote 
Mrs.  Siddons,  long  years  afterwards,  in  the  autograph  Memoranda 
she  bequeathed  to  Campbell.  It  would  not,  one  imagines,  have 
taken  the  oracle — as  she  called  Garrick — many  minutes  to  find 
out  various  facts  about  her,  besides  the  obvious  one  that  she 
was  (in  Johnson's  phrase)  towering  in  confidence  of  twenty- 
one.  Except  electricity,  nothing  is  more  rapid  than  an 
experienced  actor's  recognition  of  the  professional  standard. 

Garrick  selected  for  Mrs.  Siddons's  debut  an  important,  if,  to 
a  pathetic  actress,  not  very  grateful,  Shakespearean  part,  Portia. 
It  was,  at  least,  one  that  Bate  had  underlined  at  her  request,  a 
strange  fact,  since  there  was  no  scope  for  passion  in  it.  Later, 
she  herself  realised  the  deficiency  of  the  r61e — and  grumbled  at 
Garrick  for  imposing  it  on  her.  There  can  be  little  doubt  that, 
before  she  came  to  London,  and  while  she  stayed  in  London, 
she  was  accounted,  and  accounted  herself,  on  the  whole,  a 
comedy  rather  than  a  tragedy  actress.  King  was  her  Shylock, 
and  Tom  Davies's  '  very  pretty  wife '  her  Nerissa.  The  play  was 
given  on  a  Friday, — December  29th,  1775 — anc*  on  the  bill  Mrs. 
Siddons  appeared  as  '  a  Young  Lady  (being  her  first  appearance)/ 
The  poor  girl  was  found  wanting.  She  tottered  and 


24  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

trembled,   and   her  voice   could   not   get   over  the   footlights. 
Inadequacy  seemed  to  stand  confest.     By  the  Trial  scene,  she 
had  somewhat  rallied,  but  still  her  tones  were  so  weak  as  often 
to  be  inaudible — a  defect  that  must  have  been  fatal  to  the  con- 
fident, declamatory  style  playgoers  associate  with  that  special 
1  bit  of  fat,'  the  Quality  of  Mercy  speech.     Next  day,  with  the 
exception  of  Bate,  or  his  mouthpiece,  in  the  Morning  Post,  the 
critics,  to  a  man,  condemned  her.     Woodfall's  paper,  the  Morn- 
ing Chronicle,  advised  her  '  to  throw  more  fire  and  spirit  into  her 
performance/  the  Gazetteer  and  New  Daily  Advertiser  found  her, 
on  account  of  *  monotony '  and  of  '  a  vulgarity  in  her  tones,'  ill 
calculated  to  '  sustain  that  line  in  a  theatre  she  has  at  first  been 
held  forth  in.'     The  utmost  praise  of  her  acting  to  which  her 
part  discoverer,  Bate,  ventured  now  to   commit   the   Morning 
Post  was  a  vague  opinion  that  '  her  FORTE  seems  to  be  that  of 
enforcing  the  beauties  of  her  author  by  an  emphatic  though  easy 
art,  almost  peculiar  to  herself.'     Her  painful  timidity,  the  quality 
of  all  others  embarrassing  to  an  audience  assembled  for  enjoy- 
ment, was  dwelt  on  by  all. 

Had  the  '  Diurnal  Writers'  of  1775  appreciated  the  obstacles 
against  which  the  debutant  laboured,  one   of  them,  perhaps, 
might  have  thought  her  worth  a  word  of  encouragment.     She 
was  in  feeble  health — a  seven-weeks'  mother.     Except  for  what 
natural  genius  had   taught   her,  she   was   an    unlessoned   girl, 
unschooled  in  the  endless  fine  shades  of  those  trained  artists,  the 
socie'taires  of  Drury  Lane.     Lastly,  she  was   already   writhing 
under  the  jealous  disdain  of  the  regnant  queens  of  the  green- 
room.     Who  was  this  raw  nobody ',  that  she  should  have  a  Shake- 
spearean heroines  part  ?     Poor,  dear  Mr.  Garrick  must  be  growing 
reckless  on  the  eve  of  his  retirement — at  any  ratey  extremely  ill- 
judged.     And,  oh  la,  what  clothes  !     For  Portia,  a  faded,  salmon- 
coloured  sacque  and  coat — salmon-coloured,  forsooth,  and  obviously 
second-hand.     Did  Mr.  Bensley  or  Mr.  Brereton  murmur  '  elegant 
figure '  f       Yes — well — it  never  would  have  occurred  to   them. 
There  was  no  brilliancy,  no  style,  no  je  ne  s^ais  quoi — and  each 
fair  one  looked  still  more  conscious  as  she  contributed  her  self- 
descriptive   term.     Indeed — and  to  drop  a  totally  uninteresting 
subject — the  sooner  the  poor  thing  trundled  back  to  her  barns,  the 
better — they  had  no  wish  to  detain  her.    Such  was  the  attitude  of 


FALSE  DAWN  25 

sister-women.  The  aggrieved  ladies  called  her '  Garrick's  Venus,' 
and  on  whichever  noun  they  placed  the  accent,  we  may  imagine 
the  title  received  additional  sting. 

She  was  '  Venus '  because,  on  her  first  night,  and,  again, 
later,  she  walked  in  that  character  in  the  afterpiece, '  the  Jubilee,' 
a  replica  of  the  pageant  arranged  for  Garrick's  Shakespeare 
Festival  at  Stratford-upon-Avon  in  1769,  and  abandoned  there, 
on  account  of  disastrous  weather.  As  a  revival,  on  the  boards  in 
London, ( the  Jubilee '  was  a  big  success,  in  spite  of  the  objections 
made  by  the  leading  members  of  the  company  to  demeaning 
themselves  by  walking  as  the  mere  '  shadows '  of  Shakespearean 
characters  that  some  of  them  had  never  even  been  associated 
with.  It  was  in  the  last  scene  of  this  revival  that  the  c  Ladies, 
worthy  creatures ! '  as  William,  better  known  as  '  Gentleman,' 
Smith  ironically  calls  them  in  a  letter  to  Garrick,  tried  to  block 
out  Venus  from  the  sight  of  the  audience,  while  Garrick 
(smilingly,  we  may  be  sure)  frustrated  their  intentions  by 
deliberately  leading  her  down  to  the  front  of  the  stage.  Little 
Tom  Dibdin  was  Venus's  Cupid,  whom  to  keep  of  a  cheerful 
countenance  Mrs.  Siddons  bribed  with  a  promise  of  sugarplums 
at  the  fall  of  the  curtain.  While  Tom  was  away,  not  well 
(whether  from  digestive  upset  consequent  on  the  sugarplums  is 
not  stated)  a  Master  Mills  personated  Cupid.  "  I  could  have 
killed  that  boy,"  says  Dibdin.  However,  when  he  returned, 
Mrs.  Siddons  comforted  him  by  saying,  "  I  did  not  like  Master 
Mills  so  well  as  I  do  you."  The  first  words  Dibdin  heard  Mrs. 
Siddons  utter,  "  Ma'am,  could  you  favour  me  with  a  pin  ?  "  were 
addressed  to  Mrs.  Garrick's  maid,  when  one  of  Cupid's  wings 
dropped  off 

If  Garrick  had  had  no  conviction  that  Mrs.  Siddons  possessed 
the  makings  of  a  fine  actress,  why  should  he  have  continued  to 
risk  the  reputation  of  the  theatre  to  whose  welfare  he  had,  for 
twenty-nine  years,  scrupulously  subordinated  every  personal 
consideration  by  giving  valuable  parts  to  this  novice  who  had 
been  so  willing  to  come  to  him  in  all  humbleness,  without  con- 
tract of  any  kind  ?  Why  did  he  not  relegate  her  from  the  rank 
occupied  by  Mrs.  Yates,  Miss  Younge,  and  Miss  Wrighten  to 
the  below-the-salt  position  of  Mrs.  Davies  and  Miss  Sherry  and 
Miss  Hopkins,  the  prompter's  daughter,  all  pretty  women,  but 


26  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

negligible  actresses,  who  "  appeared  and  disappeared,"  as 
Holcroft  has  it  in  his  Theatrical  Recorder •,  "  merely  to  fill  up  the 
routine  "  ?  Instead,  and  in  spite  of  the  unfavourable  criticisms, 
not  only  did  he  put  her  on  for  better  work,  viz.  to  act  with 
himself  in  his  final  performances  of  Richard  III,  as  Lady  Anne, 
and  of  Hoadly's  The  Suspicious  Husband,  as  Mrs.  Strictland  to 
his  Ranger,  but,  partly,  no  doubt,  out  of  mischief  and  a 
pardonable  desire  to  punish  the  other  ladies,  he  handed  her,  in 
the  greenroom,  from  her  own  seat  to  a  chair  next  his  own,  he 
paid  her  perhaps  exaggerated  respect,  he  gave  her  a  place  in  the 
boxes  to  see  his  farewell  round  of  parts. 

I  like  to  think  of  the  lessons  Mrs.  Siddons  received,  on  her 
off  evenings,  as  she  watched  those  versatile  passages  of  byplay, 
those  surpassing  soliloquies  and  '  side-speeches,'  all  that  Diderot 
called  Garrick's  ' singerie  sublime'  Siddons  was  a  woman,  and 
Garrick  a  man,  and  his  acting  was,  as  far  as  any  art  can  be, 
realism,  while  hers  was  destined  to  bring  in,  or  revive,  on  the 
whole,  an  idealising  method  of  representation,  yet  the  very  fact 
of  seeing  the  great  actor  so  earnest  in  his  art  was  in  itself  an 
unforgetable  education. 

The  whole  sentiment  of  Drury  Lane  Theatre  under  Garrick 
must  have  made  a  tremendous  impression  upon  the  young 
actress,  an  impression  bound,  when  leisure  for  the  mind's 
reaction  came,  to  stimulate  in  her  every  kind  of  professional 
ambition.  After  the  rough-and-tumble,  the  paper  wings,  hoop 
chandelier,  and  superannuated  scenery,  the  half-understood 
ignominy  of  strolling  arrangements,  she  found  herself  on  a 
stage  sentinelled  by  two  of  the  King's  soldiers,  and  before 
a  house  so  adroitly  managed  that,  in  Garrick's  great  scenes, 
hush  men  were  stationed  in  various  parts  of  the  auditorium, 
to  '  hist '  along  the  thrilling  silence  he  required. 

The  lessons  she  received  from  '  the  sovereign  of  the  stage ' 
came  not  only  by  informal  observation.  He  always  took 
infinite  trouble  over  training  his  players.  Kitty  Clive  bore 
witness  to  this  when  she  described  him,  '  with  lamb-like 
patience,'  '  endeavouring  to  beat '  his  '  ideas  into  the  heads  of 
creatures  who  had  none  of  their  own.'  In  evidence,  one  of  the 
*  creatures,'  Edward  Cape  Everard,  calling  himself,  on  the  title- 
page  of  his  book,  *  Pupil  of  the  late  David  Garrick,  Esq./  states 


FALSE  DAWN  27 

that  Garrick,  reprimanding  him  after  a  rehearsal  for  his  *  boyish 
blunder'  of  averring  that  he  would  play  better  on  the  night, 
said,  "If  you  cannot  give  a  speech,  or  make  love  to  a  table, 
chair,  or  marble,  as  well  as  to  the  finest  woman  in  the  world, 
you  are  not,  nor  ever  will  be  a  great  actor."  Garrick  gave 
Mrs.  Siddons  definite  suggestions  towards  improving  her  acting. 
He  told  her,  as  Lady  Anne,  not  to  move  her  arm  in  the  stiff, 
exaggerated  way  she  did,  and  that  the  management  of  her  arms 
constituted  one  of  her  early  difficulties  we  are  reminded  in 
Walpole's  letter  to  the  Countess  of  Upper  Ossory,  dated 
November  3rd,  1782,  where  he  says,  "  Her  action  is  proper,  but 
with  little  variety ;  when  without  motion,  her  arms  are  not 
genteel." 

Unfortunately,  Mrs.  Siddons  did  not  take  this  correction 
well.  She  assigned  to  it  the  motive  that  Garrick  could  not  bear 
her  to  shade  the  tip  of  his  nose — as  she  put  it.  This  amounted 
to  saying  that  he  would  have  vetoed  any  acting,  however 
transcendent,  on  her  part,  if,  for  an  instant,  it  diverted  attention 
from  Garrick — an  idle  charge.  No  great  actor  ever  objected  to 
good  byplay  on  a  subordinate's  part,  for  the  simple  reason  that 
all  byplay  that  emphasises  the  scene  is  so  much  assistance  to 
himself.  Mrs.  Siddons  gradually  deluded  herself  into  a  fixed 
idea — the  readiest  salve  to  wounded  vanity — that  her  non- 
success,  at  Drury  Lane,  in  1776,  arose  from  the  Manager's  not 
pushing  her  as  he  might  have  done  had  he  not  feared  for  his 
own  predominance. 

Garrick  certainly  told  her  that  if  he  gave  her  the  best  parts, 
the  other  gentle  creatures  of  the  greenroom — to  wit,  Mrs.  Yates 
and  Miss  Younge — would  poison  her.  It  is  noticeable  that 
Mrs.  Abington,  the  comedy  queen,  was  not  named.  She,  most 
likely,  felt,  throughout,  that  the  Siddons  never  could  be  her 
rival,  and  this  may  account  for  the  fact,  stated  by  Sheridan, 
that  when  the  next  Management  dismissed  Mrs.  Siddons, 
Mrs.  Abington  alone  called  them  fools.  Garrick  might  truth- 
fully have  told  his  new  '  Young  Lady '  that,  if  he  permitted  her 
to  be  Drury  Lane's  feminine  mainstay  on  his  own  off  nights, 
the  receipts  would  fall  off  considerably,  in  view  of  the  continued 
non-approbation  of  press  and  public.  They  did  not  think  her 
worth  the  trouble  of  a  hiss.  '  Lamentable '  was  the  unequivocal 


28  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

word   employed   by  the  London  Magazine  for   May,  1776,  to 
sum  up  her  performance  of  Lady  Anne. 

Temperament  and  genius  must  always  vary,  but  it  is  none 
the  less  strange  to  contrast  the  slow,  wavering  rate  at  which 
Mrs.  Siddons's  art  developed  with  the  art  of  Garrick,  which, 
sufficiently,  at  all  events,  for  universal  applause,  '  reach'd 
perfection  in'  its  'first  essay/  when,  on  October  ipth,  1741, 
he  played  Richard  III  at  Goodman's  Fields.  At  the  time 
Mrs.  Siddons  came  upon  the  '  D.  L.'  scene,  Garrick,  then  within 
six  months  of  his  last  appearance  there,  was,  both  as  an  artist 
and  socially,  in  his  full  sunset  glory.  Everybody  who  was 
anybody  was  caressing  him,  and  fighting  for  places  to  see  him 
play. 

Remembering  Mrs.  Siddons's  disgust  at  what  she  called 
1  the  fulsome  adulation  that  courted  Garrick  in  the  Theatre/  one 
cannot  contemplate  the  account  she  gave  of  her  uncomfortable 
relations  with  that  distinguished  man  without  a  vivid  suspicion 
that  one  direction  in  which  the  young  lady  was  lacking  lay 
in  reluctance  to  pay  compliments.  If,  during  this  winter  season, 
she  had  been  something  less  of  a  Cordelia,  if  she  had  heaved 
her  heart  (or  words  to  that  effect)  into  her  mouth,  and  assured 
Garrick  that  his  Kitely  was  luminous,  Miss  Younge  that  her 
Zara  was  divine,  and  '  Moll '  Yates  (at.  forty-eight)  that  the 
whole  audience  took  her  for  twenty-five,  we  might  have  traced, 
in  the  record  of  1776,  a  lubricant  we  miss. 

Everything  Garrick  said  or  did  was  a  grievance  to  Mrs. 
Siddons  in  her  overwrought  condition,  battling,  as  she  thought 
herself,  for  life,  in  a  supreme  current  of  fortune.  It  is  more 
remarkable  that  subsequent  success  never  brought  her  its  usual 
accompaniment  of  placable  after-judgment  When  John  Taylor 
repeated  to  her  Sheridan's  opinion  of  Garrick's  Eichard  III  as 
'  very  fine,  but  not  terrible  enough/  she  exclaimed,  '  Good  God  ! 
what  could  be  more  terrible  ? '  and  proceeded  to  tell  him  that, 
ivhile  rehearsing  Lady  Anne  to  Garrick's  Richard,  in  the  morning, 
Garrick  requested  that  when,  at  night,  he  led  her  from  *  the  sofa/ 
she  would  follow  him  step  by  step,  because  he  did  a  great  deal 
with  his  face,  and  wished  not  to  turn  it  from  the  audience ;  *  but 
[she  went  on]  such  was  the  terrific  impression  his  acting  produced 
upon  her,  that  she  was  much  too  absorbed  to  proceed,  and  obliged 


By     His     M  A  J  E  S  T  Y  9*     COMPANY, 

At  the  Theatre  Royal  In  Drury-Lane 

This   prefent    MONDAY,    May  27,  .1776, 
Will  be  preferred  a  TRAGEDY,   call'd 

KINGRlCHARDtheTHiRD. 

King  Richard  by  Mr.  GAR  RICK, 

(Being  his  Firft  Appearance  in  that  Character  thefe  4  Years). 

Richmond     by    Mr.     PALMER, 

Buckingham  by  Mr.  JEFFERSON, 

Tre/Tel     by     Mr.     D  A  V  I  E  S, 

Lord   Stanley     by     Mr.      B   R  A  N  S  B  Y, 

Norfolk     by     Mr.     H  U  R  S  T, 

Catefby     by     Mr,      PACKER, 

Prince    Edward     by     Mifs     P.     HOPKINS, 

Duke  of  York  Mafter PULLEY,  Lord  Mayor  Mr  GRIFFITHS, 

Ratcliffe  by  Mr.  WRIGHT,  Lieutenant  by  Mr.  FA.WCETT, 

King  Henry  by  Mr.   REDDISH, 
Lady  Anne  (Firft  Time)  Mrs.  SIDDONS, 

Butchers  of   York     by     Mrs.     JOHNSTON, 

Queen    by     Mrs.     HOPKINS. 

To  which  will  be  added 

The   DEVIL   to   PAY. 

Sir  John   Loverule    by    Mr.    V  E  R  N  O  N, 

Jobfon     by     Mr.     MOOD  Y, 
Lady  Loverule    by    Mrs.    JOHNSTON, 
Nell     by     Mrs.     WR1GHTEN. " 

Indies  are  Jefortt  to  fend  (fair  Servants  a  little  after  5  to  hep  Places*  fo  prevent  Covfufion. 

The  Doors  will  be  opened  at  Half  after  FIVE   o'CIock 
To  begin  exactly  at  Half  after  SIX  o'CIock.  Vivant  Rex  &  Regina. 

To-morrow,  (by  particular  Defjre)  BRAGANZA,  with  Bon  Ton,  or  High  Life  above  Stair" 
(Being  the  laft  Time  of  performing  thtm  this  Seafon.) 

And  Dancing  by  Mr.  SLINGSBY  and  Signora  PACINL 

A    PLAYBILL  THAT   COMBINES   THE   TWO   GREATEST   NAMES   OF   THE 
ENGLISH  STAGE 


FALSE  DAWN  29 

him,  therefore,  to  turn  his  back,  on  which  he  gave  her  such  a 
terrible  frown,  that  she  was  always  disturbed  when  she  re- 
collected it.' 

Though  Garrick  was  constitutionally  unsympathetic  to  failure, 
she  could  not  charge  him  with  any  more  unkind  overt  act  than 
that  he  once  frowned  at  her  to  remind  her  she  was  being  guilty 
of  a  dereliction  of  obvious  stage  duty.  Actresses  on  the  defensive 
are  kittle  cattle,  and,  at  this  juncture,  I  would  not  (to  use  Mr. 
Shandy's  phrase)  give  a  cherrystone  to  choose  between  Clive, 
the '  mixture  of  combustibles/  Gibber,  the  *  greatest  plague ' — be- 
cause the  most  persistent — of  Garrick's  ladies,  Abington,  '  the 
worst  of  bad  women,'  as,  in  his  exasperation,  he  called  her,  and 
our  illustrious  Sarah  Siddons.  When  it  comes  to  a  blow  to 
their  self-importance,  they  are  all  in  a  tale.  Such  is  the  toll  the 
profession  of  acting  takes  from  feminine  good  sense. 

Garrick's  period  of  unweariable,  well-organised  work  closed 
on  June  loth,  1776,  and  that  was  the  final  night  (already  delayed 
beyond  the  customary  annual  closing  date)  of  the  season  for 
which  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Siddons  had  been  engaged.  Mrs.  Siddons's 
last  occasion  of  acting  with  Garrick  was  June  5th,  when,  for  the 
third  time,  she  '  supported '  the  character  of  Lady  Anne  to  his 
Richard.  It  was  a  royal  command  night. 

Whatever  Garrick  might  have  done  for  our  heroine  in  an 
ensuing  season  had  now  to  be  undertaken,  or  let  alone,  by  his 
successors  in  Management,  Willoughby  Lacy,  Sheridan,  Linley, 
and  Ford.  Years  afterwards,  when  Garrick  was  safely  dead, 
Sheridan  used  to  tell  the  tragic  queen  that  the  outgoing 
Manager  had  made  remarks  adverse  to  her  re-engagement. 
This,  coming  whence  it  did,  was,  at  least,  doubtful,  whereas  it 
should  be  noticed  that  a  heedless  public  had  made  no  sign  to 
justify  new  men  in  retaining  her. 

The  most  crushing  sentence  on  her  acting  appeared  when, 
after  she  had  played  Julia,  the  girl's  part,  in  Bate's  The 
Blackamoor  Washed  White,  the  Morning  Chronicle  of  Friday, 
February  2nd,  observed  of  the  preceding  evening's  cast,  "  All 
played  well,  except  Mrs.  Siddons,  who  endeavoured  to  support 
her  character,  but  having  no  comedy  in  her  nature,  she  rendered 
that  ridiculous  which  the  author  evidently  designed  to  be 
pleasant"  Here  was  a  tyro  openly  arraigned  of  'having  no 


30  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

comedy  in  her  nature,'  yet  Garrick  had  evidently  thought  her 
less  apt  at  tragedy,  or  he  would  not  have  given  her  a  greater 
number  of  comedy-young-lady  parts.  It  is  worth  noticing, 
as  showing  how  the  timid  and  impressible  actress  fluctuated, 
that,  in  a  separate  paragraph  of  '  Theatrical  Intelligence/  in  the 
Saturday's  Morning  Chronicle,  we  may  read,  "  Mrs.  Siddons 
yesterday  evening  played  Julia  much  better  than  on  Thursday." 

Mrs.  Siddons  and  her  husband  confidently  expected  re- 
engagement.  Garrick  had  promised — no  doubt,  in  his  'hey, 
why  now — yes,  now,  really,  I  think — Mrs.  Garrick  is  waiting ' 
way — to  do  his  best  to  pass  them  on,  and  they  themselves  saw 
no  commercial  nor  artistic  reason  for  their  being  passed  over. 
They  were  playing  a  summer  engagement  in  Birmingham  when 
the  sword  fell  in  the  shape  of  a  formal  letter  from  the  Drury 
Lane  prompter,  W.  Hopkins  (whose  daughter  John  Kemble 
was,  in  1787,  to  marry),  to  tell  them  that  their  services  would 
not  be  required  the  following  season. 

Mortification  made  Mrs.  Siddons  ill.  "  For  a  year  and  a 
half  I  was  supposed  to  be  hastening  to  a  decline."  The  castles 
in  Spain  had  toppled  down,  and  she  was  bound  in  miseries — 
free  to  make  what  provincial  engagements  she  could.  Her 
ever-smouldering  rancour  is  eloquent  in  this  sentence  she  penned 
in  old  age — "  For  the  sake  of  my  poor  children  I  roused  myself 
to  shake  off  this  despondency,  and  my  endeavours  were  blest 
with  success,  in  spite  of  the  degradation  I  had  suffered  in  being 
banished  from  Drury  Lane  as  a  worthless  candidate  for  fame 
and  fortune."  That  terrible  sense  of  frustration  which  drives  a 
weak  soul  into  inactivity  drove  Mrs.  Siddons  into  increased 
seriousness  and  harder  work.  She  resolved  '  to  shake  off  this 
despondency.'  Steadiness  of  pursuit  is  the  ruling  character- 
istic of  strong  natures.  "  The  time  will  come  when  you  will 
hear  me." 


Ill 

MRS.  SIDDONS  OF  THE  BATH  THEATRE 

FOR  two  years  and  a  quarter, between  the  date  when  Drury 
Lane  gave  Mrs.  Siddons  her  congt  and  the  date  when 
she  became  attached  to  the  Bath  Theatre,  she  and  her 
husband  were  connected  with  various  provincial  stock  companies. 
Throughout  the  summer  and  autumn  of  1776,  they  were  at 
Birmingham  and  Liverpool,  under  the  Management  of  Yates 
and  Joseph  Younger. 

The  gallery  of  the  new  theatre  in  New  Street,  Birmingham, 
echoed  the  London  verdict  on  the  weakness  of  Mrs.  Siddons's 
voice.  "She  motions  nicely,  but  she  can't  shout  out  loud," 
declared  a  spokesman  of  the  Birmingham  gods.  From  them, 
and  still  under  Younger's  Management,  she  passed  on  to 
Manchester,  where,  as  at  Liverpool,  Hamlet  was  one  of  her 
applauded  efforts.  Though  she  did  not  achieve  a  new  Hamlet 
— what  can  a  woman's  Hamlet  ever  be  but  a  tour  de  force! — 
the  character  appealed  to  her  intellectual  seriousness,  and  we 
may  believe  that,  in  her  hands,  Shakespeare's  type  of  ironic 
genius  suffered  no  further  wrong  than  that  of  being  arrayed 
in  '  a  shawl-like  garment.'  Mrs.  Siddons  and  her  husband  had 
ceased  to  be  the  literal  vagabonds  of  heretofore.  They  were 
engaged,  for  considerable  periods,  in  stock  companies  of  high 
respectability. 

In  Liverpool  commenced  the  lifelong  friendliness  that 
existed  between  Mrs.  Siddons  and  a  woman  of  almost  equal 
force  of  character,  Elizabeth  Inchbald,  then  still  an  actress. 
In  Manchester,  whither  the  two  ladies  and  their  husbands 
moved  for  the  winter  season,  John  Kemble,  aged  nineteen, 
became  a  member  of  the  company.  Boaden,  in  his  Memoirs  of 

Mrs.  Inchbald,  tells  us  that,  in  March    1777,  the  five  players, 

31 


32  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

with  two  congenial  men  added,  took  a  blameless  Wilhelm 
Meister  holiday,  in  lodgings,  on  Russell  Moor,  near  Appledur- 
combe.  In  the  mornings,  Mrs.  Siddons  washed  and  ironed 
for  her  husband  and  children,  singing  as  she  worked.  In  the 
afternoons,  the  whole  party  went  on  the  moor,  and  played 
blindman's  buff  and  puss  in  the  corner.  In  the  evenings,  the 
grown-ups  sat  down  to  cards,  and,  sometimes,  Mrs.  Siddons  and 
Kemble  obliged  with  duets. 

A  harsh,  but  clever,  pastiche  of  Mrs.  Siddons,  at  about  this 
date,  occurs  in  Lady  Bell>  by  '  Sarah  Tytler,'  where  the  heroine 
discovers  the  actress  seated  in  an  inn  kitchen,  "  and  occupied, 
between  the  intervals  of  feeding  the  child,  in  supping  heartily 
from  a  basin  of  bread  and  milk." 

In  Manchester,  Mrs.  Siddons  had  not  been  far  from  the 
circuit  presided  over  by  the  enterprising  Tate  Wilkinson.  He 
beckoned,  and  the  villeggiatura  on  Russell  Moor  broke  up  early 
in  April  to  allow  her  to  enter  upon  a  short,  but  triumphant, 
visit  to  York,  where  she  carried  all  before  her,  both  in  tragedy 
and  comedy,  put  a  Miss  Glassington  completely  in  the  shade, 
and  caused  a  Mrs.  Hudson  to  quarrel  with  the  Manager  to  the 
point  of  leaving  him.  Mrs.  Siddons  even  succeeded  in  melting 
the  prejudices  of  a  certain  Mr.  Cornelius  Swan,  York's  self- 
constituted  dramatic  arbiter,  and  a  very  exacting  censor  indeed. 

It  is  easy  to  write  of  any  one  who  came  in  contact  with 
that  zestful  anecdotist,  Tate  Wilkinson.  Better  (for  biographical 
purposes)  a  month  in  the  Ridings  than  a  year  with  Younger,  or 
any  other  less  garrulous  Manager. 

Wilkinson  was  all  over  notes  of  admiration.  Never  had  any 
previous  actress  so  rapidly  subjugated  his  theatre  in  Blake 
Street.  Mrs.  Siddons  was  '  a  lamp  not  to  be  extinguished/  a 
lamp  kept  going  by  '  unquenchable  flame  of  soul.'  He  recorded 
that  his  patrons,  one  and  all,  expressed  their  '  astonishment, 
that  such  a  face,  judgment,  etc.,  could  have  been  neglected  by 
the  London  audience,  and  by  the  first  actor  in  the  world.'  Tate 
never  missed  an  opportunity  of  getting  his  little  pocket-knife 
into  his  old  benefactor,  Garrick  tyrannos.  He  and  his  wife  had 
the  visiting  actress's  almost  constant  company  at  their  house, 
and,  across  a  pinch  of  'his  most  excellent  Irish  snuff'  (for 
Tragedy's  divinest  daughter  loved  '  snuffing ')  Mrs.  Siddons  told 


MRS.  SIDDONS  OF  THE  BATH  THEATRE          33 

him — to  his  high  satisfaction — that  she  liked  her  'country 
excursions,  and  the  civilities  she  met  with  so  well,  and  thought 
her  treatment  in  London  so  cruel  and  unjust,  she  never  wished 
to  play  there  again.' 

According  to  provincial  usage,  the  Management  provided 
the  theatrical  dresses,  and  Tate,  who  vaunted  himself  in  this 
department  as  '  the  tippy,'  tried  to  bribe  Mrs.  Siddons  to  return 
to  York,  after  the  recess,  as  a  resident,  by  promises  of  silks  and 
fine  array  exceeding  anything  Mr.  Younger's  wardrobe  could 
offer.  There  was,  in  particular,  a  silver-trimmed  'full  sack,' 
with  a  large  hoop,  provided  for  her  Lady  Alton  (in  The  English 
Merchant,  by  George  Colman  the  elder),  for  though  she  herself  was 
shortly  to  become  one  of  the  earliest  anti-hoop  ladies,  Tate,  for 
his  part, c  was  partial  to '  whalebone  on  the  stage,  sharing  Queen 
Charlotte's  opinion  that  a  hoop  gave  consequence.  Over  the 
confection  with  the  foil  trimmings  Mrs.  Siddons  'enthused.' 
She  said,  in  her  large-eyed,  innocent  way,  that  she  wished  she 
could  convey  it  elsewhere  with  her — '  it  made  her  feel  so  happy.' 

At  York,  she  opened  with  Murphy's  Grecian  Daughter,  and, 
says  Tate,  "  I  had  the  honour  of  being  her  old  father."  He 
especially  comments  on  her  extraordinary  elegance,  and  on  the 
picturesqueness  of  her  attitudes  whenever  she  had  to  fall  or  die 
on  the  stage.  Proportioned  like  the  Milo  Venus,  she  possessed 
the  indispensable  requisites  of  elegance,  a  short  torso  and  long 
legs,  longest  from  knee  to  ankle.  She  was  still  suffering  from 
the  shock  of  her  London  dismissal,  and  every  one  at  York 
remarked  how  ill  and  pale  she  looked,  and  wondered  how  she 
could  get  through  her  parts. 

On  May  i/th,  her  month's  engagement  ended  with  the  close 
of  the  York  theatrical  season,  and  she  returned  to  Manchester. 
The  next  notice  as  to  her  movements  comes  from  Mrs. 
Inchbald's  journal,  as  follows : — 

"  I  rose  at  three  in  the  morning,  and  left  Manchester  in  a 
post-chaise  with  Mrs.  Siddons  and  her  maid.  The  gentlemen 
rode  in  the  stage-coach.  They  breakfasted  at  Macclesfield  ;  after 
which  they  proceeded  on  their  journey  to  Birmingham;  Mr. 
Inchbald  on  horseback — Mr.  Kemble  was  taken  in  to  the  chaise 
by  the  ladies ;  till  very  late  in  life  he  was  an  indifferent 
horseman." 


34  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

At  Birmingham,  in  their  usual  style,  the  Siddons  and 
Inchbald  groups  lodged  together.  Sometimes,  "  Mr.  Inchbald 
painted  in  the  apartment  of  Mrs.  Siddons  whose  exertion  had 
given  her  a  fit  of  illness,"  and,  sometimes,  Kemble  read  English 
history  aloud,  Mrs.  Inchbald  making  '  notes  of  the  important 
facts  '  as  he  went  on. 

During  that  bleak  summer  when  the  conclusive  intelligence 
of  failure  in  London  reached  her,  Mrs.  Siddons  had  some 
opportunities,  in  Birmingham,  of  playing  leading  business  with 
the  finest  actor  between  Garrick  and  Kean,  John  Henderson, 
who,  by  his  premature  death,  made  room  for  Kemble  at  the  top 
of  the  tree.  Had  Henderson  not  died  at  thirty-eight,  Kemble, 
it  may  be,  would  only  be  remembered  to-day  as  the  scholarly, 
stagy  brother  of  a  histrionic  genius. 

Henderson  was  that  exceptional  being,  a  thought-inspiring 
actor.  Whether  as  Hamlet  or  Falstaff,  he  was  equally  masterly 
and  subtle.  Kemble  described  his  Shylock  as  'the  greatest 
effort  he  ever  witnessed  on  the  stage,'  and  his  lago  must  have 
been  one  of  the  profoundest  pieces  of  acting  ever  seen,  so 
completely  did  he  exhibit,  side  by  side  with  lago's  villainy, 
lago's  almost  superhuman  art  of  concealing  villainy  from  its 
victims. 

It  was  Henderson,  at  the  time  'the  Bath  Roscius'  (which 
meant  the  Bath  Garrick)  of  four  golden  seasons,  who,  discerning, 
in  1776,  Mrs.  Siddons's  genius,  wrote  off  to  his  Manager,  John 
Palmer,  the  younger,  of  Bath,  urging  him  to  secure  her.  The 
outcome  was  an  engagement,  which  included  wife  and  husband, 
for  the  Orchard  Street  Theatre,  the  most  distinguished  theatre 
in  England  outside  London.  If  anything  could  alleviate  the 
former  injuriousness  of  fortune,  it  was  the  fact  of  being  engaged 
for  the  brilliant  city  in  the  West. 

There  is  a  paucity  of  record  as  to  how  Mrs.  Siddons 
employed  the  time  between  her  benefit  at  York,  May  I7th, 
1777,  and  October  24th,  1778,  when  she  commenced  at  Bath. 
Had  she  been  unfeminine  enough  to  preserve  and  docket  her 
correspondence,  as  Garrick  did  his,  information  as  to  her  where- 
abouts during  this  period,  as  well  as  a  hundred  other  details, 
now  missing,  might  enrich  her  biographers'  pages.  Garrick, 
by  the  way,  went  so  far  in  methodicalness  as  to  keep  a  list 


MRS.  SIDDONS  OF  THE  BATH  THEATRE          35 

of  all  the  people  who  had  abused  him.  Mrs.  Siddons,  whose 
habit  it  was  to  think  of  her  enemies  as  the  enemies  of  the 
Lord,  was  less  likely  than  her  placable  predecessor  to  need  any 
written  list  to  remember  them  by. 

During  the  summer  of  1777,  the  future  queen  of  the  stage 
was,  as  playbills  for  June  27th — September  I5th  prove,  in 
Liverpool.  For  part,  at  least,  of  the  rest  of  the  time  inter- 
vening between  York  and  Bath,  she  was  playing  in  Manchester. 
In  June  1778,  she,  her  brother,  and  her  husband  were  again 
with  Younger  in  Liverpool.  Before  the  theatre  there  opened 
for  this  latter  season,  the  Liverpool  people  issued  a  manifesto 
to  the  effect  that  it  was  no  use  for  Younger  to  bring  any 
company  to  Liverpool  that  had  not  played  before  the  King. 
On  the  opening  night,  Mr.  Siddons  was  sent  on,  before  a 
vociferating  and  bottle-throwing  audience,  bearing  a  board, 
Marge  enough  to  secure  his  person/  inscribed  with  Younger's 
petition  to  be  heard.  The  lordly  assembly  would,  however, 
hear  nothing.  Mrs.  Siddons  entered  next  P.S.,  and  Mrs. 
Kniveton  O.P. — the  former,  for  one,  had  fulfilled  the  required 
condition  of  having  acted  before  George — but  nothing  could 
avail.  Mrs.  Kniveton  did  what  Mrs.  Siddons  would  have 
scorned  to  do,  i.e.  fainted  in  front  of  the  audience,  at  which 
the  wretches  only  laughed.  They  next  brushed  every  lamp 
out  with  their  hats,  jumped  on  the  stage,  took  back  their 
money,  and  left  the  theatre.  Kemble  describes  the  riot  in  a 
letter  to  Mrs.  Inchbald  at  Leeds. 

The  valuable  patent  of  the  Bath  Theatre  was,  in  1777, 
held  by  as  many-sided  a  man  as  the  more  famous  earlier 
Bathonian,  *  humble '  Allen.  Stirring,  persevering  John  Palmer 
ran  the  Bath  Theatre  conjointly  with  the  Bristol  Theatre, 
and  it  was  while  moving  his  company  (which  he  did  three 
times  a  week)  from  Bath  to  Bristol,  in  the  'specials'  he 
retained  for  the  purpose,  that  the  idea  of  mail-coaches  for 
the  postal  service  struck  him.  On  August  2nd,  1784,  the 
first  English  mail-coaches  were  driven  between  London  and 
Bristol,  under  his  auspices.  In  1796,  when  Mayor  of  Bath, 
and  five  years  before  he  first  Represented  Bath  in  Parliament, 
Palmer  set  on  foot,  and  collected,  a  subscription  of  nearly  a 
million  sterling,  to  aid  Pitt  in  carrying  on  England's  naval  war. 


36  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

The  theatre  which  was  to  become  Mrs.  Siddons's  first 
House  of  Fame  had,  when  she  reached  it,  been,  for  ten  years, 
a  Theatre  Royal — the  first  theatre  in  England,  outside  London, 
to  obtain  a  patent.  It  had,  quite  recently,  been  enlarged 
and  ventilated,  at  an  outlay  of  £1000.  It  is  true  that  Mrs. 
Siddons  was,  later,  to  speak  of  its  bad  construction  as 
responsible  for  the  fears  she  and  her  friends  felt,  in  1782,  as 
to  whether  her  voice  would  fill  Drury  Lane. 

Palmer  had  a  quick  eye  for  merit,  and,  once  a  year,  made 
a  tour  round  the  principal  country  theatres,  foraging  for  new 
talent,  and  observing  what  other  Managers  were  doing. 
Diversely  occupied  as  he  was,  he  had  to  delegate  actual 
managerial  work  upon  a  sub-Manager,  who  was  '  Acting '  and 
'Stage'  Manager  in  one.  At  Palmer's  date,  the  prompter 
and  the  box-office  keeper  were  more  important  functionaries 
than  nowadays.  Palmer's  prompter,  Floor,  who  saw  Mrs. 
Siddons  act  in  Liverpool,  was  in  part — by  adding  his  recom- 
mendations to  Henderson's — instrumental  in  effecting  her 
Bath  engagement. 

The  population  of  *  Beautiful  Bath/  including  its  visitors, 
was,  in  1778,  about  thirty  thousand.  We  need  ask  for  no 
better  image  of  Bath  life  than  is  given  in  The  Rivals.  Towards 
the  end  of  October — when  Mrs.  Siddons  began  to  act — the 
city  was  fast  filling,  for  the  winter  season,  with  very  genteel 
families.  'And  more  expected  every  day,'  as  Lady  Miller, 
exactly  a  year  later,  wrote  to  Dr.  Whalley,  adding,  'Bath  is 
become  very  pleasant,  there  is  good  music,  good  fires,  good 
plays,  cards,  assemblies,  etc.'  By  this  time,  King  Nash  had 
long  ceased  to  rule  Bath  and  hold  the  alms  basin  at  the  Abbey. 
He  had  done  his  work  of  abolishing  coarse  manners, — duelling, 
white  aprons,  and  top-boots, — and,  since  his  death  in  1761, 
Bath  had  diligently  taken  in  hand  its  own  further  refinement. 
There,  of  all  places,  was  to  be  found  '  a  really  box-audience/ 
the  most  judicious  in  the  kingdom.  Theatrically  considered, 
Bath  was  a  more  select  London.  It  was,  also,  the  acknow- 
ledged antechamber  to  London. 

"  Nature  and  Providence  may  have  intended  the  place  for 
a  resource  from  distemper  and  disquiet.  Man  has  made  it  a 
seat  of  racke  and  dissipation."  So,  at  Prior  Park,  said 


MRS.  SIDDONS  OF  THE  BATH  THEATRE          37 

Smollett,  then  meditating  medical  practice  at  Bath,  and, 
indeed,  the  proportion  of  those  who  came  for  pleasure  always 
exceeded  the  health-seekers.  While  the  latter  were  steaming 
out  their  gout  in  the  King's  Bath,  the  former  loitered  in 
*  toy  '-shops,  absorbed  vermicelli  soup  at  Gill's,  the  eminent 
cook's,  and  consulted  the  Bath  Directory.  The  more  elegant- 
minded  looked  in,  every  day,  some  at  Leake's,  some  at 
Tennant's  Library  (those  '  evergreen  trees  of  diabolical  know- 
ledge'), where  they  could  converse,  with  congenial  spirits, 
about  pictures,  taste,  Shakespeare,  and  the  winter's  dramatic 
prospects. 

Mrs.  Siddons's  first  appearance,  on  October  24th,  was 
in  comedy.  She  played  Lady  Townly.  She  was  supported 
by  Dimond,  since  Henderson's  departure,  the  Bath  premier^ 
Blisset,  and  Edwin.  Of  these  three,  John  Edwin,  who  died  of 
'  taking  too  much  refreshment ' — la  maladie  du  siecle — at  forty, 
is  the  only  one  whose  name  survives.  Mrs.  Siddons's  second 
appearance  was  on  October  27th,  when  she  played  Mrs. 
Candour,  a  part  in  which  her  '  significant  looks '  were  praised 
by  Mrs.  Thrale,  who  admitted  her  general  inferiority  in  comedy, 
Other  leading  ladies  being  in  possession,  Palmer,  at  first,  only 
asked  Mrs.  Siddons,  as  a  general  thing,  to  act  on  Thursdays, 
the  Bath  Cotillon  nights,  when  *  every  thing  that  could  move ' 
(as  Boaden  rather  strongly  puts  it)  went  to  the  Lower 
Rooms. 

We  want  no  surer  indication  of  the  attractiveness  of  Mrs. 
Siddons's  acting  than  the  fact  that  after  she  had  been  at  work 
a  few  Thursdays — long  enough  to  be  seen  in  tragedy — the 
Dressed  Balls  began  to  thin,  in  favour  of  the  theatre.  Thomas 
Sheridan — a  past-master — was  one  of  the  earliest  enthusiasts, 
and  she  called  him  '  the  father  of  my  fortune  and  my  fame.' 
Very  shortly,  she  became  'this  justly  admired  daughter  of 
Melpomene,'  and,  next,  '  this  astonishing  tragedian.'  She  was 
soon  '  of  the  family  of  the  sure-cards,'  as  Boaden  says  of  Mrs. 
Inchbald  as  a  playwright.  She  not  only  conquered  the  Cotillons, 
but,  before  a  frivolous  audience,  brought  tragedies  into  vogue. 
Gifted,  beautiful,  of  unexceptionable  manners  and  untarnished 
reputation,  attended  by  a  personable,  sedate  husband,  and  still 
in  the  May-morn  of  her  youth,  she  was  beset  by  invitations, 


38  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

troops  of  friends,  and  other  flattering  evidences  of  success. 
Compared  with  what  she  had  received  at  Drury  Lane,  there 
was  certainly  a  substantial  drop — from  £5  to  £3  a  week — in  her 
salary.  In  a  country  theatre,  even  at  Bath,  £$  a  week  would 
have  been  a  '  star '  salary.  Here,  however,  she  had  a  promising 
benefit  to  look  to,  which,  when  it  came,  proved  beneficial  to  the 
amount  of  £146.  Added  to  her  regular  earnings,  this  sum 
sufficed  to  free  her  from  what  Scott  designates  'the  ignoble 
melancholy  of  pecuniary  embarrassment.'  Mrs.  Siddons  of  the 
Bath  Theatre  could  not  afford  a  maid  to  paper  her  curls,  but 
was  able  to  keep  a  nurse-girl  to  help  in  looking  after  the 
children,  whose  number  the  arrival  of  a  second  little  daughter 
(Maria),  born  in  I779,1  increased  to  three. 

Mrs.  Siddons  found  the  circumstances  of  her  engagement 
arduous  from  the  fact  that  Palmer  required  his  company  to 
double,  not  their  parts,  but  their  stage,  with  Bristol,  whence 
they  had  to  return  to  Bath  at  two  in  the  morning. 

"After  the  rehearsal  at  Bath,"  she  wrote  in  the  autograph 
Memoranda  she  bequeathed  to  Campbell,  "  and  on  a  Monday 
morning,  I  had  to  go  and  act  at  Bristol  on  the  evening  of  the 
same  day;  and  reaching  Bath  again,  after  a  drive  of  twelve 
miles,  I  was  obliged  to  represent  some  fatiguing  part  there  on 
the  Tuesday  evening." 

From  the  artistic  standpoint,  the  four  years  that  now  super- 
vened are  deeply  interesting,  for,  during  this  period,  Mrs. 
Siddons  was  forming  her  art.  These  were  her  self-discovering 
years,  when  the  gathered  energies  of  her  nature  were  pressing 
forward  in  one  direction.  Considerable  success,  according  to 
its  wont,  only  came  after  long  study  and  labour.  Its  star, 
meanwhile,  shone  in  her  brain,  and  led  her  on. 

Bath  may  fairly  claim  Mrs.  Siddons  as,  dramatically,  its 
child.  The  glory  to  which  she  afterwards  attained  was  largely 
due  to  the  assiduous  application,  varied  practice,  and  critical 
following  for  which  the  Orchard  Street  Theatre  provided  the 

1  Campbell  (i.  82)  gives  July  ist  as  the  date  of  Maria's  birth.  The  Registers  of 
Bath  Abbey,  published  (down  to  1800)  in  the  Harleian  Society's  Series,  contain  two 
Siddons  baptisms,  as  follows :  "  1779-  Feb.  24.  Maria  d.  of  William  and  Sarah 
Siddons."  "1781.  Apr.  26.  Frances  Emilia  d.  of  William  and  Sarah  Siddons." 
The  latter  child  we  must  suppose  to  have  been  the  daughter  whom  biographers 
mention  as  having  died  very  young. 


MRS.  SIDDONS 

THIS    SKETCH    BY    ROMNEY    HUNG    ON    ONE    WALL    FOR    NEARLY    A    HUNDRED    YEARS 


MRS.  SIDDONS  OF  THE  BATH  THEATRE          39 

opportunities.  A  local  permanent  company  of  trained  actors, 
accustomed  a  s'emboiter,  is  the  true  nucleus  of  the  much-talked- 
of  national  theatre.  To  Mrs.  Siddons  Bath  was,  what  Henderson 
had  found  it,  a  c  college/ 

The  most  valuable  passage  that  occurs  in  the  whole  of  the 
autograph  Memoranda  left  with  Campbell  registers  an  incident, 
which,  though  historically  belonging  somewhat  earlier,  probably 
to  the  time  of  the  Cheltenham  engagement,  may  well  appear 
here,  as  it  evidences  what  artless  preparations  Mrs.  Siddons, 
in  the  beginning,  had  thought  adequate  for  playing  the  part 
that  afterwards  became  her  most  towering  intellectual  triumph, 
Lady  Macbeth :  — 

"  It  was  my  custom  to  study  my  characters  at  night,  when 
all  the  domestic  cares  and  business  of  the  day  were  over.  On 
the  night  preceding  that  in  which  I  was  to  appear  in  this  part 
for  the  first  time,  I  shut  myself  up  as  usual,  when  all  the  family 
were  retired,  and  commenced  my  study  of  Lady  Macbeth.  As 
the  character  is  very  short,  I  thought  I  should  soon  accomplish 
it.  Being  then  only  twenty  years  of  age,  I  believed  that  little 
more  was  necessary  than  to  get  the  words  into  my  head,  for 
the  necessity  of  discrimination,  and  the  development  of  character, 
at  that  time  of  my  life,  had  scarcely  entered  into  my  imagina- 
tion. But  to  proceed.  I  went  on  with  tolerable  composure,  in 
the  silence  of  the  night  (a  night  I  never  can  forget),  till  I  came 
to  the  assassination  scene,  when  the  horrors  of  the  scene  rose  to 
a  degree  that  made  it  impossible  for  me  to  get  farther.  I 
snatched  up  my  candle,  and  hurried  out  of  the  room  in  a 
paroxysm  of  terror.  My  dress  was  of  silk,  and  the  rustling  of 
it,  as  I  ascended  the  stairs  to  go  to  bed,  seemed  to  my  panic- 
struck  fancy  like  the  movement  of  a  spectre  pursuing  me.  At 
last  I  reached  my  chamber,  where  I  found  my  husband  fast 
asleep.  I  clapt  my  candlestick  down  upon  the  table,  with- 
out the  power  of  putting  the  candle  out,  and  I  threw  myself 
on  my  bed,  without  daring  to  stay  even  to  take  off  my 
clothes." 

A  more  characteristic  picture  was  never  painted — first,  the 
amazing  confidence  of  the  young  actress  in  her  power  of 
memorising  a  great  (though  not  a  long)  part  within  twenty- 
four  hours,  then  her  unconscious  witness  to  her  typically 


40  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

histrionic  temperament  in  her  record  of  the  emotion  of  the  part 
so  rapidly  and  completely  dominating  her  nerves  and  imagina- 
tion. Small  wonder  that  out  of  such  malleable  stuff  a  match- 
less artist  was  shaped.  The  test  of  an  artist  is  quick  feeling  in 
the  hour  of  study. 

The  words  with  which  the  passage  concludes  should  not  be 
omitted,  since  they  reveal  the  Mrs.  Siddons  of,  so  to  speak, 
private  clothes — that  staid,  businesslike,  platitudinising,  pike- 
staff matron  who  kept  house  with  the  spirit  of  fire  and  dew. 
Never  was  there  another  artist  of  foremost  rank  who  showed 
fewer  traces  of  what  is  commonly  understood  as  art's  unfailing 
accompaniment,  The  Artistic  '  Temperament ' : — 

"  At  peep  of  day  I  rose  to  resume  my  task  ;  but  so  little  did 
I  know  of  my  part  when  I  appeared  in  it  at  night,  that  my 
shame  and  confusion  cured  me  of  procrastinating  my  business 
for  the  remainder  of  my  life." 

,  Every  record  of  a  great  player's  methods  is  interesting, 
especially  at  first-hand.  The  above  description  of  how  Mrs. 
Siddons  gave  herself  to  Lady  Macbeth's  part  is  infinitely  better 
worth  having  than  her  barren  statement  about  the  '  labour '  of 
acting  at  Bath  and  Bristol  on  alternate  evenings.  But  nothing 
is  so  rare  as  to  find  an  actor  or  actress  writing  instructively 
and  to  the  point  on  the  art  of  acting.  It  is  the  vice  of  players, 
when  they  compile  their  memoirs,  to  descant  on  their  friends, 
their  press  notices,  their  tours,  on  anything  and  everything  but 
the  real  thing. 

As  we  may  believe  from  her  own  testimony,  Mrs.  Siddons's 
ease  in  committing  parts  to  memory  was  prodigious.  She 
possessed  what  Lord  Rosebery  has  called  the  '  priceless  gift  of 
concentration.'  A  fortnight  of  rehearsals  sufficed  her,  at  all 
times,  even  for  the  biggest  part.  Far  more  than  on  rehearsals 
she  relied  on  private  study.  She  kept  her  brain  fertilised  by 
incessant  consideration  of  her  parts.  She  was  one  of  the  wise 
persons  who  know  that  the  secret  of  good  work  is  to  '  plod  on, 
and,  still ' — by  dint  of  ever  deepening,  ever  renewed  study — 
1  keep  the  passion  fresh.'  When  preparing  a  part,  in  '  the  quick 
forge  and  workinghouse  of  thought,'  she  never  spoke  her  words 
aloud,  leaving  for  the  rehearsals  that  magic  awakening  of  her 
already  carefully  meditated  conceptions.  She  allowed,  too,  for 


MRS.  SIDDONS  OF  THE  BATH  THEATRE          41 

the  stimulus  of  theatrical  surroundings,  and,  after  her  second 
debut  in  London,  she  used  to  tell  the  elder  Sheridan,  on  whose 
criticisms  she,  in  a  measure,  depended,  that  he  must  first  go 
down  with  her  to  the  theatre,  '  where  alone  she  could  show  him 
exactly  what  she  could  do  at  night.' 

One  of  the  remarkable  points  about  her  acting  in  this,  her 
early  period,  was  that  it  was  entirely  self-derived  and  original. 
During  her  1776  season,  she  had  seen  much  of  Mrs.  Yates  and 
Miss  Younge's  playing,  and  had  had  opportunities,  on  her  off 
nights,  to  observe  Mrs.  Barry's  methods  at  Covent  Garden,  but 
she  seems  never  to  have  been  influenced,  in  the  slightest  degree, 
for  or  against,  by  the  way  any  other  eminent  actress  had  en- 
visaged any  classic  part,  played  any  scene,  or  uttered  any 
speech.  She  seems  never  to  have  known  what  it  was  to  be 
temporarily  swept  off  her  feet,  as  to  her  own  individuality,  by 
the  individuality  of  an  older,  maturer  artist. 

And,  however  little,  during  the  opening,  the  comedy, 
performances  at  Bath,  her  acting  promised  the  strength  and 
execution  it  was  to  display  in  1782,  it  was  invariably  well 
imagined.  In  youth  and  age,  on  the  spur  of  the  moment  or 
deliberately,  Mrs.  Siddons,  whenever  she  spoke  of  her  own 
practice  of  her  art,  spoke  of  it  as  solely  indebted  to  her  ob- 
servation of  nature.  Her  earliest  remark  of  the  kind — since  it 
belongs  to  the  Bath  period,  and  occurs  in  a  letter  to  her  Bath 
friend,  Dr.  Whalley — should  be  quoted  in  this  context : — 

"  I  hope  [she  writes]  with  a  fervency  unusual  upon  such 
occasions,  that  you  will  not  be  disappointed  in  your  expecta- 
tions of  me  to-night ;  but  sorry  am  I  to  say  I  have  often 
observed,  that  I  have  performed  worst  when  I  most  ardently 
wished  to  do  better  than  ever.  Strange  perverseness !  And 
this  leads  me  to  observe  (as  I  believe  I  may  have  done  before), 
that  those  who  act  mechanically  are  sure  to  be  in  some  sort 
right,  while  we  who  trust  to  nature  (if  we  do  not  happen  to 
be  in  the  humour,  which,  however,  Heaven  be  praised,  seldom 
happens)  are  dull  as  anything  can  be  imagined,  because  we 
cannot  feign." 

In  one  sense,  all  acting  is  feigning,  but  Mrs.  Siddons  meant 
that  what  was  requisite  to  ensure  her  best  was  her  sincere,  albeit 
transient,  identification  of  herself  with  her  part — the  soul  and 


42  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

essence  of  great  acting — which  nervousness  or  mental  pre- 
occupation inevitably  impairs. 

Her  first  Bath  season  closed  on  June  1st,  1779,  and,  before 
it  closed,  it  fell  to  her  lot,  on  April  29th,  to  read,  and  on  May  1st 
to  recite,  Sheridan's  *  Monody  on  Garrick.' 1  On  September  27th, 
she  commenced  her  second  season  with  her,  as  yet,  immature 
Lady  Macbeth,  and,  during  the  subsequent  winter,  '  Master  and 
Miss  Siddons '  appeared  on  her  benefit  night  as  her  (stage) 
children  in  James  Thomson's  Edward  and  Eleanora.  The 
perfection  of  her  intelligence  in  pathetic  tragedy  had  by  this 
time  securely  established  her  position  at  Bath.  Every  touching 
word  came  bettered  from  her  mouth ;  every  sentiment  of  honour 
and  virtue  was  made  real  by  the  exquisite  sensibility  of  her 
utterance.  Tom  Davies,  describing,  in  his  Dramatic  Miscellanies 
(iii.  148),  what  she  was  in  1782,  notices  that  "her  modulation 
of  grief,  in  her  plaintive  pronunciation  of  the  interjection, '  O  ! '  is 
sweetly  moving  and  reaches  to  the  heart."  It  perhaps  occurs 
to  a  latter-day  person  that  to  put  so  much  into  an  '  O '  would 
certainly  require  art  peculiarly  capable  of  lifting  banality  out 
of  recognition.  For  her  part,  Mrs.  Siddons  now  said  openly 
that  she  wished  never  to  leave  these  sympathetic  Bath  audiences. 

It  is  to  be  noticed  that  William  Siddons  never  took  anything 
better  than  a  minor  r61e  in  pieces  in  which  his  wife  was  the 
heroine.  When  she  was  Jane  Shore  in  Rowe's  tragedy,  he 
played  Derby  (a  part  of  five  lines) ;  when  she  appeared,  for  one 
night  only,  as  Hamlet  (in  Garrick  and  Lee's  Shakespeare  im- 
proved) he  was  Guildenstern.  There  is  but  little  recorded 
observation  as  to  how  he  supported  the  fourth-rate  characters 
assigned  him,  but  it  is  to  be  feared  he  was  hardly  worth  his 
salary.  He  is  stated  to  have  been  an  exacting  critic  of  other 
people's  acting,  and  a  good  coach  to  his  wife.  He  "  was  some- 
times very  cross  with  her  when  she  did  not  act  to  please  him," 
deposed  Mrs.  Summers,  who,  at  Bath,  played  confidante  to 
Mrs.  Siddons  in  the  tragedies.  The  Rev.  Henry  Bate,  it  may 
be  remembered,  described  Siddons  to  Garrick  as  'a  damned 
rascally  player,  though  seemingly  a  very  civil  fellow,'  but,  on 

1  "I  never  yet  was  able  to  read  that  lovely  Poem  without  weeping  most 
plenteously" — Mrs.  Siddons  to  R.  B.  Sheridan.  From  an  unpublished  letter,  in 
Mr.  J.  H.  Leigh's  collection,  dated  March  8th,  1814. 


MRS.  SIDDONS  OF  THE  BATH  THEATRE          43 

better  acquaintance,  retracted  the  condemnatory  portion  of  his 
criticism  sufficiently  to  allow  that  Siddons's  Young  Marlow  was 
'  far  from  despicable.'  Years  later,  Mrs.  Siddons  spoke  to 
Whalley  of  her  husband  as  a  much  better  judge  of  the  like- 
liness  of  a  MS.  tragedy  than  herself. 


IV 
THE   BATH   CIRCLE 

IN  every  watering-place,  there  are  two  distinct  populations, 
the  visitors  and  the  residents,  and  it  is  a  curious  fact  that, 
at  Bath,  as  Mrs.  Siddons  knew  it  between  1778  and  1782, 
the  greater  number  of  remembered  names  we  meet  in  association 
with  hers  belonged  to  the  latter  section.  On  the  other  hand, 
among  '  the  flux  of  quality '  was  to  be  found  the  foremost  of 
her  admirers,  in  the  shape  of  the  most  celebrated  social  queen 
of  the  late  eighteenth  century,  Georgiana,  Duchess  of  Devon- 
shire, Reynolds's  mirthful  Madonna.  Wherever  she  went,  the 
Duchess  spread  the  actress's  fame.  Indeed,  after  Mrs.  Siddons 
shone  forth  as  the  Tragic  Muse  of  England,  she  liked  to  say  that 
she  owed  her  translation  from  Bath  to  London  to  advance 
advertisements  on  the  part  of  the  Duchess.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  Henderson's  recommendatory  representations  to  the 
Drury  Lane  Management  had  counted  for  a  good  deal 
more. 

That  most  likable  personality,  Thomas  Gainsborough,  had 
ceased  to  make  Bath  his  residence  about  two  years  before 
Mrs.  Siddons  settled  there.  An  alchemist  in  paint,  he  was 
a  man  who  loved  every  form  of  art,  and,  on  the  art  of  acting, 
his  remarks,  in  letters  to  his  friend,  Henderson,  are  extra- 
ordinarily penetrative.  When  he  painted  Mrs.  Siddons,  in 
what  Macaulay  called  *  the  prime  of  her  glorious  beauty,'  at  the 
age  of  twenty-nine,  in  the  blue,  striped  gown,  brown  muff,  and 
black  hat,  she  was,  once  more,  a  Londoner,  and  gave  the 
master  sittings  at  Schomberg  House.  Though  he  found  her — 
like  the  Duchess  of  Devonshire — hard  to  paint,  he,  at  all  events, 
succeeded  in  making  his  chef  tf&uvre  of  cool  colour  the  finest 
normal,  or  untheatrical,  portrait  of  an  actress  ever  painted. 


44 


THE  BATH  CIRCLE  45 

"  Two  years  before  the  death  of  Mrs.  Siddons,"  writes  Mrs. 
Jameson,  "  I  remember  seeing  her  when  seated  near  this  picture, 
and,  looking  from  one  to  the  other,  it  was  like  her  still  at  the 
age  of  seventy." 

The  painter  whose  'emotive'  life-story  afterwards  became 
so  intimately  interwoven  with  Mrs.  Siddons's  personal  chronicle 
was  brought  to  live  at  Bath  during  the  latter  half  of  her  four 
years'  residence  there.  In  1780,  Thomas  Lawrence  was  only 
eleven,  though,  from  his  confidence  and  self-possession,  he 
might  have  been  judged  to  be  one-and-twenty.  His  father,  who 
retired  from  keeping  the  Bear  Inn  at  Devizes  when  he  began 
to  see  money  in  his  brilliant  son,  had  once  been  an  actor,  and 
ever  after  remained  so  addicted  to  the  theatre  that  he  came  over 
from  Devizes  once  a  week  to  pass  an  evening  in  the  Bath  green- 
room. Certain  of  the  fact  that  young  Tom  possessed  genius 
though  uncertain  as  to  its  direction,  Thomas  Lawrence  pere, 
at  first,  believed  he  saw  in  him  the  makings  of  an  actor,  and 
encouraged  him  to  recite  Shakespeare.  Before  long,  the 
prodigy's  even  greater  skill  in  drawing  made  him  think 
differently,  and,  after  two  years  on  St.  James's  Parade,  the 
family  hired  Mrs.  Graham's — late  Mrs.  Macaulay's — Alfred 
House,  Alfred  Street,  at  £100  a  year  rent,  took  in  a  permanent 
'  P.  G.'  (Cumberland's  sister,  a  Mrs.  Alcock),  and  profited  from 
Tom's  precocious  ability.  By  the  time  the  boy  was  twelve,  he 
had  many  sitters,  among  them  Mrs.  Siddons,  of  whom,  during 
her  final  Bath  season,  he, '  JE?  13  ',  made — the  first  of  his  many 
portraits — a  crayon  sketch  (later,  engraved,  and  largely  pur- 
chased) in  her  character  of  Euphrasia  in  The  Grecian  Daughter^ 
at  the  moment  when  she  stabs  the  tyrant.  Lawrence  saw  the 
play  in  the  Bath  Theatre,  and,  although  Mrs.  Siddons  sat  to 
him  afterwards,  the  impassioned  aspect  of  the  original  portrait 
is  due  to  its  boy-painter's  strong  original  impression  in  the 
playhouse. 

It  is  disappointing  that  Mrs.  Siddons's  lodgings  in  Bath 
cannot  be  identified.  Apparently,  she  and  her  husband  were 
domiciled,  during  their  last  season, '  at  Mr.  Telling's,  on  Horse 
Street  Parade.' l  This,  at  all  events,  was  the  address  given  by 

1  In  the  opinion  of  Mr.  Sydney  Sydenham  of  Bath,  this  was  I  Garrard  Street 
(now  Somerset  Street,  Southgate  Street). 


46  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

her  husband  to  the  applicants  for  tickets  for  her  concluding 
benefit. 

It  is  pleasant  to  fancy  Mrs.  Siddons,  sometimes — what  with 
rehearsals  and  the  children,  not  very  often — carried  in  a  chair 
to  the  Pump  Room  (her  then  fine  health  needed  no  waters), 
sometimes  walking  on  her  business  about  the  Parades,  looking, 
as  she  ever  did,  with  her  goddess-like  way  of  moving,  taller  than 
she  was,  but  in  all  places  the  cynosure  of  eyes,  whether  she  was 
seen  curtseying  to  that  urbane  scholar,  old  Mr.  *  Pliny '  Melmoth, 
or  to  Garrick's  crony,  Lord  Camden,  or  passing  the  time  of  day 
with  a  handsome  father  of  thirteen  children,  Christopher  Anstey, 
of  5  Royal  Crescent,  also  of  Trumpington,  Cambs,  who,  accord- 
ing to  another  famous  lady,1  never  forgot  he  was  the  author  of 
a  celebrated  poem,  The  New  Bath  Guide>  and  was,  for  ever 
after,  *  shily  important '  (a  discerning  phrase !)  in  consequence. 
Mrs.  Siddons  would  have  had  the  sense  and  coolness  to  keep 
out  of  the  way  of  that  man  of  wrath,  Philip  Thicknesse,  of 
St.  Catherine's  Hermitage,  Gillray's  '  Lieut-governor  Gall- 
stone/ who  was  "  perpetually  imagining  insult,  and  would  sniff 
an  injury  from  afar."  She  could  more  agreeably  occupy  herself 
in  stopping  to  look  at  the  classical  ladies — so  like  herself — on 
the  plaques  and  vases  in  Josiah  Wedgwood's  branch  establishment 
in  Westgate  Buildings. 

Foremost  among  the  folk  unknown  to  general  history  of 
whom  she  saw  most  during  her  years  at  Bath,  Thomas  Sedgwick 
Whalley,  D.D.,  should  be  named.  Dr.  Whalley's  father  had 
been  Master  of  Peterhouse,  and,  when  the  son  took  orders,  his 
father's  old  friend,  the  Bishop  of  Ely,  presented  him  to  a  fat 
Lincolnshire  living,  with  the  typically  eighteenth-century  proviso 
that  he  was  not  to  reside  on  it,  as  the  fen  air  was  fatal  to  any  but 
natives.  Whalley  had  no  comfortless  scruples,  but  settled  down 
at  his  winter  house  in  Royal  Crescent,  and  his  country  place, 
first,  Langford  Court,  near  Bristol,  and,  afterwards,  when  that 
was  let,  Mendip  Lodge,  his  '  Alpine  habitation,'  just  above  it. 
He  continued  to  be  an  absentee  rector  for  half  a  century.  He 
was  instruit  and  mundane,  and  society  was  necessary  to  his 
existence.  He  loved  everything  that  was  the  reverse  of  obvious. 

This  secular  cleric  and  his — and  his  wife's — '  dearest  friend 

1  Fanny  Burney, 


THE  BATH  CIRCLE  47 

Mrs.  Siddons'  were  on  most  effusive  terms.  In  one  of  her 
letters,  she  told  him  that  she  never  went  to  bed  without  praying 
for  his  and  Mrs.  Whalley's  welfare,  she  wore  their  hair  in  a  ring, 
she  addressed  him  as  *  your  glorious  self/  '  my  best,  my  noblest 
friend,'  '  my  most  honoured.'  These  violent  delights  did  not 
have  violent  ends,  for  when,  late  in  the  twenties  of  last  century, 
her  failing  health  forbade  her  writing,  her  daughter  Cecilia 
continued  her  correspondence  with  Dr.  Whalley,  who,  after  all, 
predeceased  her.  When  she  was  young,  struggling,  and  at  Bath, 
the  Whalleys  used  to  keep  up  her  strength  with  beaten  *  Tent 
and  egg'  and  offerings  of  grapes.  In  her  palmy  days,  they 
presented  her  with  '  beauteous  and  magnificent  sables '  which 
she  wore  as  a  trimming  on  stage  dresses. 

In  all  Bath,  there  was  no  one  more  exquisite,  in  his  very 
cultured  way,  than  Whalley.  So  susceptible  to  music  that 
a  good  military  band  set  him  off  crying  in  floods,  he  exchanged 
attenuated  sentimentalities,  wrapped  in  words  of  Latin  origin, 
with  Anna  Seward.  Fanny  Burney,  a  clearer-sighted  muse, 
made  Philistine  fun  of  his  conversation,  "  about  his  '  feelings/ 
about  amiable  motives,  and  about  the  wind,  which  at  the 
Crescent,  he  said,  in  a  tone  of  dying  horror,  *  blew  in  a  manner 
really  frightful.' "  Mrs.  Siddons  was  less  awake  to  the  absurd 
side  of  affectation.  The  portion  of  the  brain  which  enables 
some  persons  to  perceive  incongruity  was  undeveloped  in  her 
organisation — partly,  because  she  was  a  tragic  actress. 

Besides  being  a  minor  poet,  Whalley  was,  it  need  scarcely 
be  said,  an  art  collector.  Men  of  his  stamp  always  are.  It 
was  for  him  that  '  Barker  of  Bath '  painted  The  Woodman. 
Whalley,  also,  adored  lap-dogs,  and  was  painted  by  Reynolds 
with  his  spoilt  and  '  bullying '  Blenheim,  the  '  Sappho/  better 
known  as  '  Paphy/  or  l  Paphy  Piddy/  to  whose  shell-pink  ears 
and  pretty  tyrannies  a  letter  of  Mrs.  Siddons's,  dated  August  2Oth, 
1782,  rather  oppressively  refers. 

Whalley  married  three  times,  and,  each  time,  went  where 
money  was.  His  first  wife  suffered  a  long  while  before  her 
death  from  spinal  curvature,  caused  by  a  carriage  accident. 
The  second  Mrs.  Whalley  was  a  Wiltshire  Heathcote.  Al- 
though possessed  of '  a  fortune  of  fourscore  thousand  pounds  in 
her  own  power/  she,  being  sixty,  was  enraptured  at  having  the 


48  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

handkerchief  thrown  to  her,  and  expressed  to  her  friends  her 
happiness  in  being  united  to  a  man  'whom  she  had  always 
admired  beyond  any  of  her  acquaintances,  and  who  brought  her 
a  fortune  equal  to  her  own.'  Within  two  years,  the  poor  lady 
died  from  a  cold.  The  widower's  third  dip  into  the  lucky 
bag  proved  a  failure.  When  nearly  seventy,  he  espoused 
Lieutenant-General  Charles  Horneck's  widow.  Instead  of  the 
hoped-for  fortune  and  good  comradeship,  she  brought  him 
debts  and  incompatibility.  They  'separated  by  mutual  dis- 
agreement,' and,  while  he  lived  in  one  house  in  Bath,  she — on 
a  handsome  settlement — inhabited  another,  where  she  gave 
large  parties.  She  was  guilty  of  the  further  bad  taste  of 
surviving  him. 

A  topic,  at  first  for  laughter,  and,  later,  for  indignant 
censure,  between  the  Whalleys  and  Siddonses  was  that 
hanger-on  of  the  literary  world,  Samuel  Jackson  Pratt, 
who  adopted  the  pseudonym  of  '  Courtney  Melmoth,'  and 
tried  to  climb  upwards  by  addressing  ingratiating  letters  to 
strangers  of  distinction.  "That  Mr.  Pratt  gains  character 
and  countenance  at  Bath,  I  wonder  not  on  his  part,  but 
I  wonder  on  the  world's,"  wrote,  to  Whalley,  the  Dean 
of  Bristol,  Nineveh  Layard's  grandfather.  Locally  known  as 
'  Pratty/  the  aspirant  thus  stigmatised  had  been  in  the  Church, 
and  on  the  stage,  but,  at  the  time  he  first  swam  into  Mrs. 
Siddons's  ken,  was  keeping  the  old-established  library  at  the 
upper  corner  of  Milsom  Street.  He  was,  in  a  hole-and-corner 
way,  a  favourite  among  the  dowagers  with  whom  Bath,  then, 
as  always,  superabounded.  "Pratt,"  said  a  caustic  contem- 
porary, "was  a  delightful  man  to  women  whom  others  had 
disgusted,  or  injured,  or  neglected." 

Pratt  had  ample  inclination  to  write,  but  very  moderate 
talent.  His  tragedy,  The  Fair  Circassian,  which,  produced  at 
Drury  Lane  on  November  27th,  1781,  owed  everything  to 
Miss  Farren,  actually  reached  a  nineteenth  night.  The  gratified 
author  followed  it  up  by  a  comedy,  The  School  for  Vanity,  in 
which,  among  other  wild  events,  a  baronet  is  saved  from 
drowning  by  an  alderman.  This  piece,  in  spite  of  Miss  Farren's 
efforts,  failed,  and  Pratt  fell  back  on  Delia  Cruscan  poems  to 
establish  his  immortality.  He  was,  moreover,  the  author  of 


THE  BATH  CIRCLE  49 

the  lines  that  disgrace  Garrick's  tomb  in  Westminster 
Abbey. 

For  a  time,  he  imposed  on  the  Whalleys  and  Mrs.  Siddons, 
also  on  the  Swan  of  Lichfield,  Anna  Seward,  who,  when  en- 
lightenment came,  was,  for  a  Canon's  daughter,  almost  un- 
becomingly irate.  From  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Siddons,  in  their  halcyon 
period,  Pratt  borrowed  a  considerable  amount  of  money,  and, 
when  Mrs.  Siddons  asked  for  a  fraction  of  it  back,  and — a  still 
worse  offence — told  him  it  was  her  rule  to  read  no  one's  MS. 
tragedy,  he  turned  vicious,  threatened  to  write  a  poem  on  her, 
entitled  Gratitude,  and  said,  among  many  flagrant  things,  that 
he  had  been  the  ladder  on  which  she  had  mounted  to  fame,  and 
was  now  kicking  down.  "What  he  means,"  commented  Mrs. 
Siddons,  "I  fancy  he  would  be  puzzled  to  explain."  In 
addition  to  his  other  meannesses,  he  had  paid  clandestine 
addresses  to  Miss  Kemble,  afterwards  Mrs.  Twiss,  under 
Mrs.  Siddons's  roof. 

Unremitting  perseverance  in  study  and  practice,  gradually, 
during  the  Bath  years,  brought  Mrs.  Siddons's  art  to  perfection. 
From  the  start,  as  we  learn  from  '  the  reliable  Genest,'  she  again 
had,  occasionally,  the  educational  advantage  of  acting  with 
'  Henderson  from  Drury  Lane,'  when  he  paid  the  original 
discoverers  of '  Mr.  Courtney '  a  theatrical  visit.  On  November 
1 7th,  1778,  he  played  Hamlet,  and  she,  the  Queen  on  the  ipth, 
she  was  Portia  to  his  Shylock.  He  extolled  her  to  young 
Sheridan,  and  she  spoke  of  him,  in  her  measured  way,  as  *  a  fine 
actor,  with  no  great  personal  advantages  indeed,  but  the  soul  of 
intelligence.'  As  early  as  July  I2th,  1780,  as  is  attested  by  the 
postscript  of  a  letter  from  Sheridan  to  Joseph  Cradock,  the 
Drury  Lane  Management  was  hoping  to  absorb  Mrs.  Siddons. 
The  postscript  runs,  "  I  am  at  present  endeavouring  to  engage 
Mrs.  Siddons,  of  the  Bath  Theatre,  which,  if  I  effect,  I  will 
inform  you."  This  letter  is  the  sole  evidence  I  have  come  upon 
that  Sheridan  contemplated  the  engagement  of  Mrs.  Siddons 
two  years  before  he  brought  it  off. 

During  the   season   of   1780-81,   Mrs.    Siddons   introduced 

her   sister   Frances    to    the    public,   as   an    actress.      By   her 

own   benefit  that   year   '  Mr.   Siddons '   (there    was,  then,   no 

Married    Women's   Property    Act!)    realised    £124.      During 

4 


50  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

1781-82,  came  the  definitive  summons  to  London.  "It  may 
be  imagined  that  this  was  to  me  a  triumphant  moment,"  said 
Mrs.  Siddons. 

Bath  audiences  did  not  part  from  her  willingly,  and  a  news- 
paper paragraph  appeared,  stating  that  Mr.  Palmer  was  'in 
expectation  of  prevailing  upon  Mr.  Sheridan  to  spare  her  a  year 
or  more  to  us.'  With  the  profits  she  had  brought  him,  Palmer, 
in  1781,  made  a  good  coachway  up  to  his  theatre,  with  a  stand 
capable  of  accommodating  over  fifty  equipages.  Quite  recently, 
no  doubt  by  reason  of  her  popularity,  he  had  advanced  the  price 
of  the  boxes  by  a  shilling.  Yet  he  did  not  offer  her  in  time  the 
moderate  rise  that  would — Boaden  states — have  retained  her  in 
a  place  where  she  was  happy.  One  wonders  whether  Lord 
North's  tax  on  theatres,  then  impending,  had  anything  to  do 
with  his  hesitancy.  "What  a  pity  this  man  did  not  sooner 
become  sensible  to  Mrs.  Siddons's  value  and  his  own  interest!" 
wrote,  in  a  letter  of  the  end  of  March,  a  Bath  lady,  related  to 
the  Whalleys,  Miss  Penelope  Sophia  Weston,  soon  afterwards 
the  wife  of  William  Pennington,  the  American  Loyalist, 
later,  M.C.  at  'the  Bristol  Hot  Wells/  and  Clifton's  oddest 
inhabitant. 

This  season,  the  prospering  actress  took  two  benefits  at  Bath, 
and  a  third  at  Bristol,  £146,  £145,  i8s.,  and  £106,  133.  At  all 
three,  the  pit  was  '  laid  into '  boxes,  and  the  front  of  the  gallery 
partitioned  off,  for  'the  gentlemen  of  the  pit.'  A  book  was, 
moreover,  placed  in  the  box-office,  "  for  those  ladies  and  gentle- 
men to  subscribe,  who  should  wish  to  pay  a  compliment  .  .  . 
and  might  be  absent  from  Bath  at  the  time  of  the  benefit." 
This  brought  in  twenty  additional  guineas  at  the  first  benefit. 
On  the  playbills  of  the  second  and  third,  Mrs.  Siddons  announced 
that  she  would  produce,  at  the  end  of  the  evening,  three  reasons 
for  her  leaving  Bath.  This  sounded  mysterious.  The  Distressed 
Mother,  Ambrose  Philips's  version  of  Racine's  Andromaque,  was 
the  play  chosen.  Dr.  Whalley  alone  was  in  the  secret.  After 
the  curtain  rose  for  the  epilogue,  Mrs.  Siddons  led  forward 
Harry,  Sally,  and  Maria  Siddons,  the  Three  Reasons,  and  very 
lovely  and  like  Reynolds's  '  Charity '  in  the  New  College  window, 
she,  no  doubt,  looked,  with  her  beautiful  children  clinging  to  the 
long  folds  of  her  gown. 


THE  BATH  CIRCLE  51 

The  idea  of  the  Three  Reasons  was  developed  at  length  in  a 
rhymed  address,  spoken  and  composed  by  this  all-competent 
matron : — 

"...  These  are  the  moles  that  heave  me  from  your  side, 
Where  I  was  rooted — where  I  could  have  dy'd." 

We  may  imagine  how  the  theatre  rang  with  applause,  and 
how  every  paterfamilias  present  wiped  his  eyes.  All  through 
her  career,  Mrs.  Siddons  displayed  an  instinct  for  personal,  and 
not  merely  stage,  publicity. 


CONQUEST  OF  LONDON 

r  I  ^HE  year  that  shuddered  at  the  disappearance  of  \heRoyal 

George  off  '  the  Fair  Island/  in  a  waveless  summer  sea, 

was  the  year  that  witnessed  the  long-deferred  emergence 

of  England's  greatest  actress.     In    1782,  she  was  'turned  of 

twenty-seven. 

Early  in  1783,  Dr.  Russell,  historian  of  Europe,  published, 
under  his  initials,  W.  R.,  a  poem  concerning  her,  entitled  The 
Tragic  Muse,  in  which  he  stated  that — 

"This  bright  Jewel  from  the  Mine  to  bring, 
Delightful  task  !  was  left  for  generous  King," 

but  the  assertion  was  only  a  figure  of  speech.  It  was  not  till 
the  season  that  saw  Mrs.  Siddons's  Restoration  that  Sheridan 
consigned  Drury  Lane's  actual  management  to  King,  and  then 
he  did  so  without  giving  that  incomparable  speaker  of  prologues 
an  iota  of  authority  to  engage  players,  or  accept  plays.  Moved 
by  his  father,  by  Henderson,  and  by  Georgiana,  Duchess  of 
Devonshire,  it  was  Sheridan  himself  who  had  effected  the 
engagement  of  Mrs.  Siddons. 

In  D.  L.  playbills  for  September  2Oth  and  2ist,  is  to 
be  found,  among  '  notes/  at  the  foot,  "  Mrs.  Siddons  (From  the 
Theatre  Royal,  Bath)  will  shortly  make  her  appearance  at  this 
Theatre  in  a  capital  Character  in  Tragedy."  On  the  playbill  for 
September  28th,  and  again  for  October  7th,  the  part  she  was 
to  play  was  specified. 

On  Thursday,  October  loth,  1782,  she  reappeared — and 
sealed  her  triumph.  Her  probative  part  was  Isabella,  in 
Garrick's  version  of  the  tragedy  of  that  name  Thomas  Southerne 
wrote,  in  1694. 

Perhaps  none  but  actors  can  realise  the  tremors  and  earnest 


CONQUEST  OF  LONDON  53 

prayers  which  were  the  prelude  to  October  loth.  She  was  in 
for  her  final,  before  the  great  examining  board  of  London 
playgoers,  and  there  was  much  to  intimidate,  yet  more  to 
stimulate,  her  in  the  thought.  There  was  the  stinging  remem- 
brance that,  six  years  before,  she  had  failed  to  satisfy  these,  or 
similar,  examiners,  but,  this  time,  she  knew  that  her  genius  would 
not  be  veiled  and  hampered  by  immaturity.  Nothing  was  left 
of  that  trembling  Portia  who  was  judged  to  be  '  uncertain  where- 
abouts to  fix  either  her  eyes  or  her  feet.' 

At  the  rehearsals — she  had  only  two — she  created  the  right 
sensation.  At  the  first,  she  says,  "  The  countenances,  no  less 
than  tears  and  flattering  encouragements  of  my  companions, 
emboldened  me  more  and  more ; "  at  the  second,  "  Mr.  King 
was  loud  in  his  applauses."  Her  eight-year-old  son,  Harry, 
rehearsing  the  part  of  Isabella's  child  with  her,  unconsciously 
helped  forward  the  preliminary  thrill,  by  breaking  into  sobs, 
as  he  watched  the  dying  scene,  because  he  thought  that,  this 
time,  his  mother  was  not  acting,  but  really  suffering,  and  really 
about  to  leave  him.1 

When,  on  October  8th,  Mrs.  Siddons  reached  home  after 
her  second  rehearsal,  she  was  seized,  to  her  consternation, 
with  nervous  hoarseness.  Her  own  words,  again  from  her 
fragments  ol  autobiography,  have  more  than  once  been 
reprinted,  but  no  paraphrase  could  represent  the  experience 
of  her  next  forty-eight  hours  with  anything  approaching 
their  tensity. 

"  I  went  to  bed  in  a  state  of  dreadful  suspense.  Awaking 
the  next  morning,  however,  though  out  of  restless,  unrefreshing 
sleep,  I  found,  upon  speaking  to  my  husband,  that  my  voice 
was  very  much  clearer.  This,  of  course,  was  a  great  comfort 
to  me;  and  moreover,  the  sun,  which  had  been  completely 
obscured  for  many  days,  shone  brightly  through  my  curtains. 
I  hailed  it,  though  tearfully,  yet  thankfully,  as  a  happy  omen  ; 
and  even  now  I  am  not  ashamed  of  this  (as  it  may,  perhaps, 
be  called)  childish  superstition.  On  the  morning  of  the  loth 
my  voice  was,  most  happily,  perfectly  restored ;  and  again 
'  the  blessed  sun  shone  brightly  on  me!  " 

Tom   Welsh,   the   singing-master,   father-in-law    of    Piatti, 

1  The  Morning  Post,  October  loth,  1782. 


54  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

told  John  Payne  Collier,  in  1832,  at  the  Garrick  Club,  that 
he  had  had  it  from  Mrs.  Siddons's  own  lips  that  she  so 
completely  overslept  herself,  after  her  previous  fatigue,  and  a 
sleepless,  anxious  night,  that,  far  from  starting  in  time  for  a 
final  rehearsal  fixed  for  10  a.m.,  she  lay  on,  unconscious — her 
family  having  decided  not  to  wake  her — till  one  o'clock. 

Her  autobiographical  Memoranda  take  up  the  story : — 

"  On  this  eventful  day  my  father  arrived  to  comfort  me, 
and  to  be  a  witness  of  my  trial.  He  accompanied  me  to  my 
dressing-room  at  the  theatre.  There  he  left  me;  and  I,  in 
one  of  what  I  call  my  desperate  tranquillities,  which  usually 
impress  me  under  terrific  circumstances,  there  completed  my 
dress,  to  the  astonishment  of  my  attendants,  without  uttering 
one  word,  though  often  sighing  most  profoundly." 

Though  she  told  Lawrence  that,  up  to  her  highest  maturity, 
she  was  shaken  with  nervousness  before  going  on  in  a  great 
part,  yet,  true  to  her  self-contained,  reasonable  nature,  even  the 
nervousness  common  to  all  actors  and  actresses  took,  with  her, 
the  form  of  *  desperate  tranquillities/  But,  with  her,  nervous- 
ness was  done  with  as  soon  as  the  curtain  rose.  At  that 
moment,  impersonation — what  Salvini  called  transmigration — 
took  place,  and,  by  a  derivative,  equally  instantaneous,  process, 
the  audience  turned  into  the  proverbial  rows  of  cabbages. 

"At  length  [continues  her  narrative  of  October  loth] 
I  was  called  to  my  fiery  trial.  The  awful  consciousness  that 
one  is  the  sole  object  of  attention  to  that  immense  space, 
lined,  as  it  were,  with  human  intellect  from  top  to  bottom 
and  all  around,  may,  perhaps,  be  imagined,  but  can  never  be 
described,  and  can  never  be  forgotten." 

Reading  Isabella  ;  or  The  Fatal  Marriage  now,  and  comparing 
it  with  other  pieces  in  Mrs.  Siddons's  early  repertory,  one 
cannot  but  rejoice  that  it  actually  is,  like  the  child's  drama 
described  by  a  schoolfellow, '  a  little  in  the  style  of  Shakespeare/ 
A  simplicity,  as  of  an  age  more  golden  than  its  own,  resides 
in  some  of  the  lines  spoken  by  the  heroine.  The  story  is  that 
of  a  passionately  devoted  wife,  who,  believing  herself  a  widow, 
under  stress  of  poverty  remarries,  for  her  child's  sake,  and  finds 
next  day  that  her  first  husband  is  living.  The  situation  caused 
by  his  entrance  is  followed,  on  her  part,  by  '  phrenzy's  wild 


CONQUEST  OF  LONDON  55 

distracted  glare'  and  a  dagger  used,  with  a  laugh,  against 
herself. 

Mrs.  Siddons  would  have  chosen  the  more  ornate  part 
of  Euphrasia,  in  The  Grecian  Daughter,  but  '  Mr.  Sheridan, 
senior/  knew  that  her  strength  lay  in  pathos,  and  persuaded 
her  into  undertaking  the  character  that  would  give  her  most 
opportunity. 

It  is  disconcerting  to  learn  that,  in  obedience  to  our  great- 
grandfathers' crude  views  as  to  value  for  money,  immediately 
after  sympathising  with  the  anguish  of  Isabella,  people  were 
supposed  to  be  equally  ready  to  participate  in  the  humours 
of  the  farce,  which  was  William  Whitehead's  A  Trip  to  Scotland. 
In  this  direction,  a  change  was  at  hand.  By  1784,  only  two 
years  after  Mrs.  Siddons's  uprisal,  Tom  Davies  entered  in  his 
Dramatic  Miscellanies ',  "  The  farces,  which  used  to  raise  mirth 
in  an  audience  after  a  tragedy,  now  fail  of  that  effect  from 
Mrs.  Siddons's  having  so  absolutely  depressed  the  spirits  of  the 
audience." 

The  new  actress  scored  a  magnificent  success  in  Isabella 
acting  it  eight  times  in  the  first  three  weeks,  and  sixteen  times 
more  between  November  and  the  June  of  1783.  It  evei 
remained  her  favourite  non-Shakespearean  part  with  audiences. 
It  was  one  of  those  she  most  fully  realised,  for,  with  a  few 
exceptions,  the  characters  in  which  she  excelled  were  characters 
in  which  the  motherly  side  of  feminine  emotion  predominated. 
To  her,  the  part  of  Juliet  was  not  simpatica.  Similarly,  as 
Boaden  acutely  observes,  her  Jane  Shore  was  convincing  as 
to  everything  save  as  to  the  fact  that  Jane  Shore  had  been 
an  adulteress.1  Her  air  of  command,  alone,  visually  banished 
the  notion  of  frailty,  and  in  her  own  nature  she  had  nothing 
of  the  grande  amoureuse. 

The  effect  the  restored  debutante  produced  on  her  audience 
was  prodigious,  and  full-handed  thunder  greeted  this  apparition 
of  sensibility  and  power.  To  ancient  Macklin,  seated  in  the 
front  boxes,  a  mild  gentleman  remarked,  "  I  think  the  new 
actress  promises  well."  "  I  think  she  performs  well,"  snarled 
the  veteran.  With  every  act,  enthusiasm  grew  greater.  At  the 

1  A  similar  remark  was  made,  later,  by  Fanny  Kemble  concerning  Mrs.  Siddons's 
Mrs.  Haller. 


56  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

close  of  the  tragedy,  as  Boaden  quaintly  puts  it  (and  we  must 
suppose  he  was  recording  an  observed  fact), "  literally  the  greater 
part  of  the  spectators  were  too  ill  to  use  their  hands  in  her 
applause."  When  she  got  home,  everything  had  to  be  recounted 
to  Mr.  Siddons,  who  had  been  too  agitated  to  venture  to  Drury 
Lane. 

Her  account  of  how  she  finished  this  victorious  evening  is 
a  gem  of  narrative.  All  that  was  finest  and  most  endearing  in 
her  character  breathes  through  its  simple  sentences : — 

"  I  reached  my  own  quiet  fireside,  on  retiring  from  the  scene 
of  reiterated  shouts  and  plaudits.  I  was  half  dead ;  and  my 
joy  and  thankfulness  were  of  too  solemn  and  overpowering  a 
nature  to  admit  of  words,  or  even  tears.  My  father,  my 
husband,  and  myself  sat  down  to  a  frugal  neat  supper  in  a 
silence  uninterrupted  except  by  exclamations  of  gladness  from 
Mr.  Siddons.  My  father  enjoyed  his  refreshments,  but  occasion- 
ally stopped  short,  and,  laying  down  his  knife  and  fork,  lifting 
up  his  venerable  face,  and  throwing  back  his  silver  hair,  gave 
way  to  tears  of  happiness.  We  soon  parted  for  the  night ;  and 
I,  worn  out  with  continually  broken  rest  and  laborious  exertion, 
after  an  hour's  retrospection,  (who  can  conceive  the  intenseness 
of  that  reverie?)1  fell  into  a  sweet  and  profound  sleep,  which 
lasted  to  the  middle  of  the  next  day.  I  rose  alert  in  mind  and 
body." 

Out  of  the  circle  of  Bath  well-wishers  Mrs.  Siddons  chose 
Whalley  to  whom  to  unbosom  her  joy  at  the  ringing  success  of 
her  great  assault.  "  I  never  in  my  life  heard  such  peals  of 
applause,"  she  wrote  to  him,  next  day.  "  I  thought  they  would 
not  have  suffered  Mr.  Packer  to  end  the  play." 

In  conversation,  late  in  her  life,  with  C.  R.  Leslie's  friend, 
Newton,  Mrs.  Siddons  said,  emphatically,  "/  was  an  honest 
actress^  and  at  all  times  in  all  things  endeavoured  to  do  my  best." 
She,  in  part,  owed  her  capacity  for  sustained  hard  work  to  her 
fine  physique.  Hard  work  and  plenty  of  stimulus  were  the 
regime  that  best  suited  her.  At  Bath,  when  she  was  the  mother 
of  young  children,  she  would  study  till  three  in  the  morning, 
after  getting  back  from  Bristol  at  midnight.  Without  literally 
accepting  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds's  dictum  that  those  determined 

1  Query.  Was  this  reflection  Mrs.  Siddons's,  or  Campbell's  interpolation  ? 


CONQUEST  OF  LONDON  57 

to  excel  must  know  no  hours  of  dissipation — for  a  proportion 
of  every  theatrical  renomme'e  is  due  to  the  judicious  cultivation 
of  patrons  during  hours  of  so-called  dissipation — she  consistently 
put  work  before  family,  society,  and  leisure.  Except  that 
Macready  locked  himself  into  his  theatre,  and  practised  there 
on  Sundays, '  after  morning  service,' — a  proceeding  Mrs.  Siddons 
would  have  deprecated, — not  even  Macready,  laborious  though 
he  was,  outdid  her  in  application.  "  She  certainly  did  not 
spare  herself. — Neither  the  great  nor  the  vulgar  can  say  that 
Mrs.  Siddons  is  not  in  downright  earnest?  remarks  Davies,  in 
his  Dramatic  Miscellanies. 

It  was  happy  for  her  that  she  was  blessed  with  a  tenacious 
verbal  memory,  for  the  quickly  changing  bills  of  her  time 
demanded  powerful  memory  efforts.  Henderson  might  well 
write,  as  he  did,  in  1773,  to  his  Bath  employer,  Palmer,  "Let 
me  assure  you,  upon  the  credit  of  experience,  that  to  keep  over 
fifty  characters  of  great  magnitude,  importance  and  variety, 
distinct  and  strong  upon  the  mind  and  memory,  is  no  trifling 
business."  No  member  of  the  Kemble  family  was  ever  known 
to  appeal  to  the  prompter. 

Mrs.  Siddons's  genius  for  impersonation  was  so  potent  that, 
had  she  been,  as  Jules  Janin  found  Rachel,  'petite,  assez  laide  ; 
une  poitrine  ^troite^  fair  vulgaire  et  la  parole  trivialel  she  would 
still  have  hypnotised  audiences  into  believing  that  she  looked 
whatever  each  heroine  was  supposed  to  be  looking.  But,  for 
her  further  advantage,  her  physical  equipment  was  so  con- 
summate that  no  victory  of  mind  over  matter  was  needed.  She 
was  not  much  above  the  middle  height,  but,  like  many  other 
beautiful  women,  seemed  taller  than  she  was.  In  frame,  some- 
what large  of  bone,  her  grandeur  of  mien  and  the  amplitude  of 
her  gestures  added  to  the  impression,  inseparable  from  one's 
image  of  her,  of  a'goddess-like  tallness.  Mrs.  Piozzi  said  that  the 
Earl  of  Errol,  in  his  robes  at  George  Ill's  coronation,  and  Mrs. 
Siddons,  as  Murphy's  Euphrasia,  were  the  noblest  specimens  of 
the  human  race  she  ever  saw. 

Mrs.  Siddons  naturally  found  it  more  stimulating  to  play 
in  a  large  theatre,  after  the  comparatively  narrow  Orchard 
Street  stage.  She  was  the  actress  of  all  others  fitted  to  a  wide 
proscenium.  At  later  dates,  it  was  remarked  that  on  a  small 


58  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

provincial  stage,  her  manner,  winning  its  triumphs  by  broad 
effects,  her  grandiose  demeanour,  and  her  sweeping  movements 
made  her  seem  out  of  the  picture.  George  Bartley,  who  played 
Edward  IV  to  her  Margaret  of  Anjou,  in  'I he  Earl  of  Warwick, 
described  her,  to  Campbell,  as  looking  a  'giantess/  when  she 
entered,  at  the  back  of  the  stage,  through  an  '  extensive  arch- 
way/ which  she  '  really  seemed  to  fill.' 

Her  beauty  was  of  a  type  that  wore  well.  When  she  was  a 
girl,  a  friend  of  her  father's  deplored  two  facts  in  her  appear- 
ance— that  she  was  too  thin,  and  that  she  was  all  eyes.  To  the 
first  defect  she  lived  to  look  back  with  wistful  remembrance ; 
the  second,  also,  ceased,  as  the  contour  of  her  face  grew  fuller 
and  rounder.  To  Whalley,  she  wrote  of  herself,  after  the 
advent,  at  the  end  of  1785,  of  her  younger  son,  George,  as  not 
having  been  'in  face  these  last  four  months/  and  Charles 
Kemble  told  William  Bodham  Donne,  the  Examiner  of  Plays, 
that, '  like  all  the  Kembles/  she  became  '  very  emaciated,  not  to 
say  scraggy/  while  babies  were  following  one  another  in  quick 
succession. 

If  the  glory  of  her  person  will  live  for  ever  in  the  two 
celebrated  portraits,  painted  during  the  same  year,  the  enskyed 
Reynolds,  and  the  superb,  impassive  Gainsborough  (which  I 
once  heard  a  visitor  to  the  National  Gallery  designate  '  Mrs. 
Siddons  as  the  Duchess  of  Devonshire '),  the  soft  loveliness  of 
her  face  and  bust  is  more  realisable  from  two  frost-fine  chalk 
drawings  by  Lawrence,  one  lithographed  by  Lane,  the  other 
engraved  by  Nicholls,  which  have,  comparatively  recently,  been 
reproduced  in  Mr.  Knapp's  An  Artist's  Love  Story.  From  these 
intimate  portraits  by  the  man  over  whom  the  Kemble  type 
exercised  nothing  less  than  a  spell,  we  see  how  much  her 
beauty  consisted  in  the  setting  of  her  full-orbed  eyes,  the  up- 
ward curl  of  her  dark  and  silky  lashes,  the  shape  of  her  chin 
and  forehead,  the  modelling  of  her  deep  bosom  and  nobly 
muscular  shoulder — for  hers  was  a  robust,  not  a  fragile, 
charm. 

She  possessed  '  the  Kemble  Eye '  in  its  highest  perfection. 
Samuel  Russell,  an  old  actor,  told  Curling  that  those  only  who 
were  on  the  stage  with  her,  playing  their  parts,  could  have  any 
idea  of  the  power  of  her  eye.  "  It  made  the  person  on  whom  it 


CONQUEST  OF  LONDON  59 

was  levelled,  almost  blink  and  drop  their  own  eyes."  All 
observers  concur  that,  when  she  was  acting,  her  eyes  could  be 
seen  to  sparkle  or  glare  at  an  incredible  distance.  "  The  effect 
of  her  eyes,"  wrote  the  Rev.  E.  Mangin  (author  of  Piozziana), 
"  was  greatly  assisted  by  a  power  she  had  of  moving  her  eye- 
brows, and  the  muscles  of  her  forehead,"  and  Genest  says  that, 
at  certain  movements,  on  the  stage,  she  had  a  look  with  her 
eyes  hardly  possible  to  describe — "  she  seemed  in  a  manner  to 
turn  them  in  her  head."  These  wonderful  eyes  were  usually 
described  as  black — "  of  the  deepest  black,"  said  James  Beattie, 
but  the  great  portrait-painters  knew  better.  To  them,  they  were 
sepia-brown  ;  in  repose,  like  heavy  velvet. 

Her  face  was  '  seldom  tinged  with  any  colour,  even  in  the 
whirlwind  of  passion/  remarks  John  Wilson,  and  we  gather 
from  the  comment  that  she  used  little  rouge  when  acting.  As 
regards  her  nose,  Walpole  did  not  find  either  it  or  her  chin 
according  to  the  Greek  standard,  "  beyond  which  both  advance 
a  good  deal,"  and  every  one  remembers  Gainsborough's  baffled 
ejaculation,  as  he  threw  down  his  brush,  "  Damn  it,  Madam, 
there  is  no  end  to  your  nose ! "  In  every  portrait  alike,  we 
find  'the  nose/  straight,  and,  for  Aphrodite,  a  thought  too 
long,  but  betokening  artistic  capacity  and  decision  of  character. 
It  was  the  nose  that  made  her  profile  what  the  Morning 
Chronicle  of  October  nth,  1782,  termed  it,  'grand,  elegant  and 
striking.'  We  need  only  glance  at  the  generalised  portraits  of 
John  Kemble  which  Lawrence  exhibited,  under  'character'  names, 
to  know  any  one  of  them  by  Kemble's  eagle  beak.  The  Nose 
ran — if  the  expression  may  be  permitted — through  the  family. 

A  study  of  many  portraits  of  Mrs.  Siddons  brings  one  to  the 
conclusion  that  her  face,  able  and  ready  for  expression,  was  not 
too  expressive  in  repose.  It  was  plastic — the  player's  ideal  face. 

On  her  multitudinous  portraits  a  volume  might  be  written. 
Besides  the  great  Gainsborough,1  the  great  Reynolds,  and  the 
favourite  Lawrence,  all  reproduced  in  this  volume,  there  is  the 
Warwick  Castle  full-length  (in  the  Catalogue  of  the  Guelph 
Exhibition,  1891,  ascribed  to  Reynolds)  with  the  dagger  and  mask, 
and  Lord  Llangattock's  portrait  of  her,  attributed  to  Gains- 

1  Sold  to  the  National  Gallery,  in  1862,  by  Major  Mair,  husband  of  the  sitter's 
granddaughter. 


60  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

borough,  in  Cavalier  costume,  while,  in  a  'Catalogue  of  Lawrence's 
Exhibited  and  Engraved  Works/  appended  to  Lord  Ronald 
Gower's  Sir  Thomas  Lawrence,  Mr.  Algernon  Graves  names  no 
fewer  than  fourteen  several  portraits  of  her.  In  1783,  Romney 
made  the  sketch1  that  faces  p.  38,  the  finished  replica  of  which 
the  Morning  Chronicle,  May  8th,  1786,  called  his  "incomparable 
head  of  Mrs.  Siddons,  which  Raphael  would  be  glad  of,  pene- 
trated by  something  superior  even  to  Taste !  " 

After  the  work  of  the  dii  majores,  the  half-length  by 
J.  Downman,  A.R.A.,  in  the  beribboned  cap  and  scalloped 
fichu,  stands,  perhaps,  first.  It  is  well  known  from  P.  W. 
Tomkins's  engraving,  reproductions  of  which  were  included  in 
the  Magazine  of  Art,  1887  ('  Some  Portraits  of  Sarah  Siddons ' ) ; 
in  the  reprint,  1896,  of  Boaden;  in  The  Two  Duchesses,  1898 — 
mistakenly,  there,  as  Elizabeth,  Duchess  of  Devonshire ;  and  in 
Lord  Howard  de  Walden's  edition  of  The  Reminiscences  of  Henry 
Angelo,  1904.  On  the  back  of  the  painting  is  inscribed,  in 
Downman's  handwriting,  these  words,  kindly  communicated 
to  me  by  the  present  owner  :  "  Mrs.  Siddons.  1787.  Original, 
the  great  tragic  Actress.  I  drew  this  for  the  Duke  of 
Richmond,  but  he  preferred  the  Duplicate.  Off  the  Stage  I 
thought  her  face  more  inclined  to  the  comic."  Comparison  of 
this  portrait  with  the  Romney  sketch  induces  conviction  that 
both  were  faithful  likenesses.  Sir  William  Beechey's  interesting 
figure,  seated,  in  white,  with  white  turban,  painted  about  1798, 
an  ever-attractive  subject  with  copyists  in  the  National  Portrait 
Gallery,  comes  next  among  private  life  portraits. 

However  positive  we  may  feel  that  Mrs.  Siddons  was  a 
1  trumpet  set  for  Shakespeare's  lips  to  blow,'  the  overwhelming 
majority  of  her  stage  portraits  depict  her  at  the  sensational 
moments  of  non-Shakespearean  drama.  Harlow  not  only  painted 
the  famous  Katharine  portrait,  but  made  a  pencil  drawing  of 
her,  dated  'December  1813,'  as  Lady  Macbeth  (only  a  few 
reproductions  of  which  were  printed),  but,  besides  this  latter, 
there  is  no  record  that  can  be  called  artistic  of  her  highest 
dramatic  achievement. 

Among    five    portraits    (five,   at    least)   of    Mrs.    Siddons, 

1  Sold,    in    1906,   at    Christie's,    'the    property    of   a    gentleman,'    for    2500 
guineas. 


CONQUEST  OF  LONDON  61 

by  William  Hamilton,  of  the  four  in  character,  as  Isabella, 
Euphrasia,  Jane  Shore,  and  Lady  Randolph,  the  first,  a  large 
canvas  now  in  Lord  Hotham's  collection,  is  the  most  note- 
worthy. Even  in  Caldwall's  print,  it  fascinates — the  woman- 
hood is  so  heroic,  the  affliction  so  gorgeous — and  this  in 
spite  of  Genest's  criticism  that  "  as  she  is  simply  standing  with 
the  child  in  her  hand,"  no  "particular  idea  of  her  manner"  is 
conveyed.  A  propos,  the  following  story  is  told  of  one  of 
Mrs.  Siddons's  sittings,  in  1782,  to  the  Scotch  Academician,  at 
63  Dean  Street.  Hamilton  and  his  wife,  accompanying  her,  on 
leaving,  to  the  door,  commented  to  her  on  her  resemblance  to 
a  sculptured  Ariadne  on  the  staircase.  She  clasped  her  hands 
in  ecstasy.  "Yes,  it  is  very" — she  began,  and  was  adding 
"  like,"  when  a  wave  of  modesty  turned  the  word  into  "  beautiful 
— so  very  beautiful,  I  fear  you  must  be  flattering  me."  With 
this,  she  sat  on  the  stairs,  gazing  at  the  marble,  and  repeating, 
"  so  beautiful,  you  must  be  flattering  me." 

In  addition  to  the  early  Lawrence  Euphrasia,  and  Hamilton's, 
J.  K.  Sherwin  (engraving  as  well  as  painting)  and  H.  Repton 
portrayed  her  in  that  character.  Stothard  drew  her  as  Calista, 
Shireff  painted  her  both  alone  and  with  Kemble.  In  the  Garrick 
Club  hangs  an  ultra-theatric  full-length  by  Westall,  the  gift  of 
Sir  Squire  Bancroft.  The  Guelph  Exhibition  included,  among 
many  portraits,  miniatures  by  Cosway,  Horace  Hone,  R.A., 
Samuel  Shelley,  G.  Chinnery,  R.H.A.,  and  William  Hamilton, 
and  a  water-colour  of  her  with  her  brothers  by  Sir  W.  T.  Newton. 
Romney  introduced  her,  as  '  Tragedy/  among  the  red  shadows 
of  The  Infant  Shakspere  instructed  by  the  Passions,  now  at 
Stratford :  in  another  genre  work,  Lawrence's  Satan,  she 
appears,  at  Satan's  feet.  W.  Mansell  had  her  as  '  Queen  Rant ' 
in  '  The  Caricaturers  Stock  in  Trade  1786' ;  Gillray's  '  bludgeon- 
pencil  '  dealt  with  her  in  '  Blowing  up  the  Pic  Nic's,'  and  other 
prints;  Rowlandson  expressed  his  notion  of  her,  'being  in- 
structed by  her  father/  Where  she  toured,  there  she  sat  to 
some  one,  and,  for  wealthy  admirers,  like  Mrs.  Fitzhugh  and 
Lord  Hardwicke,  she  sat  to  their  favoured  painters.  It  would 
be  hard  to  find  a  contemporary  artist  who  never  depicted  Mrs. 
Siddons.  Lady  Templetown  cut  her  in  paper,  as  Jane  Shore,  for 
publication.  Flaxman,  designing  chessmen,  made  the  queens 


62  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

from  her.  Mr.  Fitzgerald  speaks  of  an  Irish  collection  of  water- 
colour  drawings,  by  Miss  Sackville  Hamilton,  of  her  poses  and 
costumes. 

Where  painters  led,  engravers  followed.  Bartolozzi,  J.  R. 
Smith,  Clint,  Heath,  Sherwin,  Say,  Caroline  Watson,  and  a  tribe 
of  others  disseminated  over  Great  Britain  presentments  of  Mrs. 
Siddons, c  antique-limbed  and  stern,'  with  the  face  of  a  Fate  on 
a  gem.  '  Minstrel '  Beattie,  being  a  Scot,  thought  her  the  most 
beautiful  woman  of  her  time  'excepting  the  Duchess  of  Gordon/ 
but  Stothard  thought  excepting  Mrs.  Fitzherbert.  Stothard 
said  that  commanding  as  Mrs.  Siddons  always  was,  in  her 
youth,  as  he  found  when  painting  her,  the  exceeding  delicacy 
of  her  beauty  seemed  far  greater  off  the  stage.  On  some  one 
observing  that  she  would  be  the  finest  possible  subject,  not 
for  a  picture,  but  a  statue,  and  that  a  bust  was  not  enough  to 
'convey  a  full  idea  of  her  surpassing  majesty,'  he  cordially 
assented,  and  mentioned  the  remark  to  Flaxman. 

A  notice  of  portraits  should  not  omit  mention  of  memorial 
statues.  Of  Thomas  Campbell's  colossal  figure  (1846) — sub- 
stituted for  his  intended  mural  alto-relievo,  now  in  the  National 
Portrait  Gallery — in  Westminster  Abbey,  we  read  only  too 
much  in  Macready's  Reminiscences.  On  Macready  the  trouble 
and  expense  of  its  erection  was  allowed,  by  a  distinguished  and 
aristocratic  committee,  almost  entirely  to  fall.  L.  Chavalliaud's 
statue  (1897)  on  Paddington  Green,  minikin  in  scale — Mrs. 
Siddons  seen  through  the  wrong  end  of  an  opera -glass  — 
has  the  distinction  of  being  the  only  open-air  statue  of  an 
actress  in  England. 

When  we  think  of  Mrs.  Siddons's  impressiveness,  sureness, 
strength,  and  fire,  we  dwell  on  characteristics  other  first-rate 
women-actors  have  abundantly  possessed,  but  the  quality  all 
her  own,  the  essence  of  her  stage  personality,  was  her  innate 
majesty,  and,  here,  no  other  actress,  however  otherwise  gifted, 
has  yet  been  her  peer.  "...  were  a  wild  Indian  to  ask  me,  What 
was  like  a  queen  ?  I  would  have  bade  him  look  at  Mrs.  Siddons  " 
— Tate  Wilkinson's  statement  is  convincing. 

Mrs.  Siddons,  in  her  Memoranda,  gives  this  ingenuous  ex- 
planation of  her  composure  when  she  was  first  introduced  at 
Buckingham  House: — 


CONQUEST  OF  LONDON  63 

"  I  afterwards  learnt  from  one  of  the  ladies  who  was  present 
at  the  time  that  her  Majesty  had  expressed  herself  surprised 
to  find  me  so  collected  in  so  new  a  position,  and  that  I  had 
conducted  myself  as  if  I  had  been  used  to  a  court.  At  any 
rate,  I  had  frequently  personated  queens." 

As  befitted  a  queen  of  tears,  melancholy  tenderness  was,  by  all 
accounts,  the  normal  characteristic  of  Mrs.  Siddons's  voice,  and  her 
prevailing  stage  expression  was  sad.  A  Rector  of  St.  Stephen's, 
Wallbrook,  thus  describes  the  impression  she  made  on  him : — 

"...  I  never  saw  so  mournful  a  countenance  combined 
with  so  much  beauty.  Her  voice,  though  grand,  was  melancholy 
— her  air,  though  superb,  was  melancholy ;  her  very  smile  was 
melancholy."1 

Contemporary  notices  of  how  Mrs.  Siddons  dressed  her 
parts  are  few,  partly,  no  doubt,  because  Tragedy  takes  less 
thought  for  clothes  than  Comedy.  Abington's  fertile  genius  for 
costume  would  have  only  belittled  a  Siddons.  A  probability 
emerges  that  audiences  were  not  certain  what  'the  Tragic 
Music '  had  on,  beyond  being  convinced  that  she  was 

*  clad  in  the  usual  weeds 
Of  high  habitual  state,' 

as  Joanna  Baillie  has  it,  in  De  Montfort,  describing  the  heroine 
(Mrs.  Siddons).  We  know  that  the  effect  of  Lady  Macbeth's 
sleep-walking  dress  was  that  of  a  soft,  muffling  whiteness,  and 
that  it  was  designed  by  Sir  Joshua.  In  the  first  two  acts  of 
Macbeth^  Mrs.  Siddons  appeared  in  a  costume  copied  from  a 
bridal  suit  of  Mary,  Queen  of  Scots,  so,  if  the  history  was 
anachronistic,  the  geography  was  unimpeachable.  Seeing  that 
the  antiquarian  Kemble  dressed  all  Shakespeare's  historical 
plays  (as  a  step  towards  realism)  in  Charles  I  costumes,  it  was 
he,  most  probably,  who  suggested  to  his  sister  the  Mary  Stuart 
dress.  Mrs.  Siddons,  by  the  way,  was  the  first  heroine  who 
dissociated  madness  from  white  satin. 

It  was  upon  her  first  appearance  as  Belvidera  at  Drury  Lane 
that  Boaden  made  the  following  antediluvian  comment :  "  There 
was  no  Venetian  costume  affected,  for  in  modern  times  it  is  not 

1  Mars  ton;  or  the  Soldier  and  Statesman.  By  the  Rev.  George  Croly,  LL.D., 
i.  50,  51.  1846. 


64  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

worth  the  inquiry  for  stage  purposes  how  the  different  parts  of 
Europe  dressed."  In  our  days  of  an  exact  knowledge  of  reality,' 
every  one  may  have  his  laugh  at  Macbeth  in  a  tie  wig,  and  the 
Grecian  daughter  in  hoops.  Should  we  not,  rather,  bring  our 
archaeological  minds  to  bear  on  the  wider  aesthetic  considerations 
urged  by  Deschamps  in  that  best  poem  on  a  picture  ever 
written  before  Rossetti's  sonnets,  a  poem  that  may  be  roughly 
Englished  thus : — 

When  Veronese  limned  each  sunburnt  guest 
At  Cana's  feast,  he  made  no  curious  quest 
In  Galilee  if  silver  threads  or  gold 
Ran  through  the  festal  robe's  embroidered  fold, 
Nor  how  were  shaped  those  instruments  divine 
Which  sang  when  God  turned  water  into  wine. 
Yet  the  Venetian  with  his  virile  hand 
Made  living  men  of  that  musician  band, 
And,  though  for  this  or  that  the  critics  blame, 
For  me,  I  love  the  picture  :  'tis  the  same 
Whether  they  carry  hautboy,  viol,  or  lyre, 
Their  hands  are  flesh.     I  am  silent.     I  admire. 

George  III,  in  his  paternal  way,  warned  Mrs.  Siddons  against 
using  white  paint  on  her  neck,  as  dangerous  to  health.  When 
Reynolds  and  Gainsborough  painted  her  in  1784,  she  was  still 
under  the  dominion  of  what  Elizabeth  Inchbald  uncompromis- 
ingly called  '  the  larded  meal.'  The  effect  of  the  mounted  head 
was  to  make  the  face  very  small.  At  the  same  time,  the  natural 
shape  of  the  head  was  lost,  winged  out,  as  it  was,  by  *  certain 
side-boxes  of  curls.'  It  described,  instead,  an  equilateral  triangle 
of  which  the  base  was  uppermost.  The  head-building  process, 
from  the  first  papillotes  to  the  last  puff  of  the  powder  machine, 
must  have  been  painfully  tedious,  and  busy  Mrs.  Siddons  gained 
many  hours  a  week  when,  in  November  1795,  she  broke  through 
the  tyranny  of  powder,  and,  like  her  strong-minded  friend, 
Mrs.  Inchbald,  who  was  among  the  first  innovators,  tried  the 
effect 1  of  natural  hair  on  the  stage. 

In  words  only  surpassed  by  Boaden's  statement  that 
Henderson's  Othello  "  agonised  himself  and  everybody  fortunate 

1  Campbell  states  that,  during  her  second  season  (1783-84),  Mrs.  Siddons  went 
unpowdered,  and  with  hair  already  £  la  grecque,  and  that  Reynolds,  thereupon, 
'  rapturously  praised  the  round  apple  form  which  she  had  given  to  her  head.'  Judging 
from  portraits,  Campbell  antedated  this  speech.  Reynolds  did  not  die  till  1792. 


CONQUEST  OF  LONDON  65 

enough  to  hear  him,"  the  Morning  Chronicle,  describing  Mrs. 
Siddons's  first  triumphal  night  in  London,  observed  she  "  wore 
her  sorrows  with  so  much  persuasive  sincerity  "  that  she  "  wrung 
the  heart,  and  gratified  the  judgment."  Such  criticisms  may 
well  bring  us  up  anew  against  the  naif  wonder  as  to  why  people 
should  consider  it  a  pastime  to  look  on  at  the  re-presentation  of 
'  sorrows  and  agonies/ 

In  view  of  the  tears  and  screams,  fainting-fits  and  convulsions, 
that  Mrs.  Siddons's  acting  called  forth,  one  must  conclude  that 
the  pleasure  of  seeing  her  act  was  a  pleasure  that  was  all  but 
pain.     Miss  Williams  Wynn  attests  this,  where,  describing  the 
effect  Mrs.  Siddons's  acting  had  upon  her,  she  calls  it  a  "  thrill 
which  more  exactly  answers  the  idea  vi  pleasing  pain  than  any- 
thing I  ever  felt,  and  I  can  hardly  attach  any  other  meaning  to 
the   words."     Henry   Angelo   records,  in   his   *  Reminiscences/ 
how,  one  night,  when  he,  with  his  family,  was  in  Mrs.  Lacy's 
box  to  see  Mrs.  Siddons  play  Isabella,  a  young  lady,  who  had 
been  at  the  rehearsal  in  the  morning,  "  determined  to  be  before- 
hand to  have  a  good  cry,  and  not  all  our  laughing  and  persuasion 
could  prevent  her  shedding  tears.     The  idea  of  what  she  must 
expect  from  her  affecting  acting,  was  enough  to  produce  weeping." 
Genest  states  that  the  excruciating  pathos  of  Mrs.  Siddons's 
Cleone,  performed  on  November  22nd,  1786,  so  affected  'the 
Ladies '  that,  on  the  24th,  the  evening  announced  for  a  repetition 
of  Dodsley's  'slaughter-house'   tragedy,  the   boxes   were   half 
deserted.     The  play,  consequently,  was,  thenceforth,  laid  aside, 
whereby  "  some  admirers,  who  on  the  supposition  that  she  would 
play  the  character  frequently,  had  not  hurried  about  seeing  her, 
were  greatly  disappointed." 

It  was,  clearly,  Mrs.  Siddons  who  brought  in  the  fashion  for  v 
the  house  to  shriek  whenever  the  heroine  shrieked.  The  faint- 
ing ladies  and  the  ostentatious  pocket-handkerchiefs  also  dated 
from  Mrs.  Siddons's  first  season.  These  hysterical  follies 
'caught  on/  and,  very  soon,  people  were  'swooning'  on  the 
slightest  theatrical  provocation.  It  would  be  interesting  to 
know  in  which  decade  the  fainting  fashion  declined.  Fanny 
Kemble,  in  her  day,  mentions  having  twice  seen  people  seized 
with  epilepsy  at  the  funeral  procession  in  Romeo  and  Juliet. 
Such  physical  paroxysms  produced  in,  and  willingly  accepted 
5 


66  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

by,  audiences  as  part  of  the  enjoyment,  form  an  extraordinary 
phenomenon  in  the  history  of  theatres.  Regarding  the  reality 
of  these  violent  responses  of  the  nervous  system  to  violent 
stimulus,  there  can,  in  many  instances,  be  no  question,  and  it 
was  not  only  in  the  case  of  innocent  members  of  the  public, 
Gautier's  'public  essentiellement  serieux  qui  croit  a  ce  quil  voit' 
that  they  were  made,  as  witness  the  anecdote  of  Holman  and 
Macready's  father,  both  hardened  actors,  sitting  in  the  Drury 
Lane  pit  while  Mrs.  Siddons  played  in  The  Grecian  Daughter. 
Any  one  who  reads  The  Grecian  Daughter  to-day  will  scarce 
forbear  to  yawn,  yet,  after  the  death-scene,  Holman  turned  to 
his  companion,  and  said,  "  Macready,  do  I  look  as  pale  as  you  ?  " 
Hazlitt,  when  summarising  Mrs.  Siddons's  artistic  career, 
recorded,  "  We  have,  many  years  ago,  wept  outright  during  the 
whole  time  of  her  playing  Isabella."  Crabb  Robinson  was 
another  cool  enough  hand  who  yet  became  so  hysterical  when, 
in  1797,  Mrs.  Siddons  was  playing  Agnes,  in  Lillo's  Fatal 
Curiosity,  that,  he  tells  us,  he  was  all  but  turned  out,  in  the  idea 
that  he  was  laughing  by  intention. 

To  be  so  excited,  playgoers  must  be  anything  but  '  barren 
spectators/  and  there  can  be  little  doubt  that  the  audiences 
of  those  days  were  keener  than  modern  audiences.  They 
produced  better  critics  of  acting,  for  Hazlitt,  Lamb,  and  Leigh 
Hunt  left  no  successors  equally  acute  and  analytic  concerning 
the  acting,  in  contradistinction  to  the  play.1  The  whole  house 
was  interested  in  '  readings '  and  '  business.'  Thanks  to  short 
runs,  and  to  the  consequent  frequent  repetition  of  Shakespearean 
and  other  masterpieces,  every  head  in  the  auditorium  could  well 
be,  in  Mr.  Max  Beerbohm's  phrase,  a  heavy  casket  of 
reminiscence. 

As  regarded  the  adequacy  of  the  voice,  found  wanting  by 
Mrs.  Siddons's  critics  of  1775-76,  she  and  her  friends  had,  before 
the  crucial  October  loth,  many  qualms,  and,  indeed,  during  her 
first  brilliant  winter,  though  none  could  censure  her  articulation, 
for  she  took  care  of  every  consonant,  as  her  mother  had  taught 
her,  a  few  adverse  opinions  lingered.  In  all  probability,  before 
she  found  the  pitch  of  the  house,  sheer  anxiety  made  her  strain 

1  Per  contra,  it  must  be  remembered  that  Leigh  Hunt's  and  Hazlitt's  '  Theatrical 
Examiners '  had  not  to  go  to  press  two  hours  after  the  fall  of  the  curtain. 


CONQUEST  OF  LONDON  67 

her  voice,  since  the  Morning  Post  said  that,  in  her  purple 
patches,  she  raised  it  harshly  and  inharmoniously. 

Her  propriety  of  utterance  and  correct  emphasis  were  the 
points  specially  commended  by  the  King,  which,  at  the  end  of 
her  opening  season,  procured  her,  by  Queen  Charlotte's  express 
command,  the  post  of  Reading  Preceptress  to  the  Princesses — 
*  a  position/  wrote  Campbell — in  the  draft  of  his  Life  of  Mrs. 
Siddons— '*\\  HONOUR,  but  no  SALARY,  and,  therefore, 
I  believe,  little  in  request.' 1  Certainly,  Mrs.  Siddons's  appoint- 
ment was  honorary,  but  the  Queen,  on  one  occasion,  gave  her 
'  a  magnificent  gold  chain,  with  a  cross  of  many-coloured  jewels/ 
— Mrs.  Siddons  called  it  her  '  badge  of  honour/ — and,  on  another, 
presented  her  with  a  nomination  to  the  Charterhouse  for  her 
elder  son.  The  actress  always  had  the  honour  of  driving 
to  and  from  Buckingham  House  in  a  royal  carriage. 

We  learn  more  of  Mrs.  Siddons's  non-theatrical  history, 
during  1782-83,  from  the  letters  to  Whalley,  preserved  in  his 
'  Memoirs/  than  from  any  other  source.  '  Pratty  ' — or  Benignus, 
as  the  Bath  set  sometimes  called  Pratt — met  with  a  considerable 
share  of  comment.  He  began  well,  by  writing  Mrs.  Siddons  an 
epilogue,  which  was,  later,  vastly  applauded,  though,  on  the  first 
night,  it  had  to  be  dropped  out  of  the  programme,  on  account  of 
her  '  excessive  fatigue  of  mind  and  body ' — and  by  this  fact 
alone  we  may  judge  how  she  had  gathered  up  all  her  force  for 
one  supreme  encounter.  Her  letter,  unfortunately  as  far  as 
Pratt  was  concerned,  went  on,  "  Never,  never,  let  me  forget  his 
goodness  to  me."  What  '  Benignus '  must  have  considered  a 
golden  opportunity  for  repaying  his  goodness  arrived  only  too 
soon,  but  Mrs.  Siddons  did  no  more  than  profess  herself  sadly 
grieved  over  the  fact  that,  after  the  predestinate  failure  of 
Thomas  Hull,  the  actor's,  anonymously  produced  prose  tragedy, 
The  Fatal  Interview,  the  Management  "  would  not  let  her  "  risk 
her  reputation  in  Pratt's  comedy,  The  School  for  Vanity. 

Though  Walpole  heard  that  '  the  Siddons '  was  declining 
great  dinners  on  the  plea  of  her  perpetual  business  and  family 
responsibilities,  already  the  world  was  making  its  claims  felt. 

1  I  came  upon  this  comment  in  turning  over  the  MS.  rough  copy  of  the  Life  oj 
Mrs.  Siddons,  sold  at  Sotheby's,  in  1906,  for  ^21.  In  his  published  work,  the  dis- 
creet poet  refined  it  away. 


68  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

"  I  have  thought  myself  very  unfortunate,"  she  writes  to  Whalley, 
"in  being  unable  to  see  her  [Whalley 's  niece]  so  often  as 
I  wished ;  but  the  constant  succession  of  business,  and  the 
nonsensical  though  necessary  round  of  etiquette,  visiting,  etc., 
etc.,  leaves  one  in  London  very,  very  little  to  use  for  one's  real 
gratification." 

In  her  prosperity  and  elation,  she  never  lost  sight  of  the  quiet 
ideals  of  her  private  character.  Without  a  shade  of  insincerity, 
she  writes,  "  I  am  still  gathering  laurels  to  place  round  the  sweet 
cottage  you  and  I  have  planned  together,  and  you  will  be  glad 
to  hear  they  are  variegated  with  gold  ;  but  as  I  am  not  ambitious 
of  finery,  I  shall  be  glad  at  a  proper  time  ...  to  exchange  them 
for  more  modest  plants."  Another  day,  she  exclaims,  "  Oh,  for 
a  piece  of  Langford  brown  bread ! "  Mrs  Siddons  was  never 
indifferent  to  food.  She  was  an  excellent  '  fork.' 

The  1782-83  letters  to  Whalley  are  dated  from  lodgings  at 
149  Strand.  A  central  and  tolerably  respectable  address  was 
essential  to  her  receiving  visits  from  people  of  any  figure  in  the 
world.  At  the  theatre,  the  first  run  of  Isabella  was  not  over 
before  she  was  advanced  from  her  original  dressing-room,  up  a 
long  staircase,  to  the  dressing-room  that  had  been  Garrick's. 

Her  salary  commenced  at  ten  guineas  a  week.  Two  years 
later,  it  was  raised  to  £24,  los.  Undoubtedly,  during  the  first 
season,  her  pay  was  below  her  value,  but  she  looked  to  her 
benefit,  on  December  I4th,  and  that,  made  free,  as  it  was,  of  all 
charges,  brought  her  over  ;£8oo.  Belvidera,  in  Venice  Preserved, 
was  the  part  she  chose  for  her  first  benefit,  and  when,  in  March 
1783,  a  second  was  allowed  her,  she  appeared  before  her  patrons 
as  Zara,  in  Congreve's  The  Mourning  Bride,  and  realised  ^650 
by  the  performance.  As  early  as  November  1782,  a  hundred 
barristers,  whom  she  described  as  '  the  whole  body  of  the  Law/ 
made  her  up  a  purse  of  a  hundred  guineas,  which  the  Hon. 
Thomas  Erskine  presented,  and  she  called  the  episode  'the 
most  shining  circumstance  of  her  whole  life/  as,  formerly,  she 
had  said  of  a  subscription  raised  for  her  in  Bath, '  Was  it  not 
elegant?'  On  December  1 7th,  she  issued,  from  the  theatre,  a 
manifesto  of  gratitude,  stating  how  she  had  been  '  told  that  the 
splendid  appearance  on  the  night  [of  her  benefit]  and  the 
emoluments  arising  from  it,  exceed  anything  ever  recorded  on 


CONQUEST  OF  LONDON  69 

a  similar  account  in  the  annals  of  the  English  stage/  She 
ended  by  protesting — as  felicitously  as  such  a  thing  could  be 
protested — that  she  '  will  carefully  guard  against  any  approach 
of  pride.'  To  do  her  justice,  she  never,  at  any  time,  treated  the 
public  in  a  high-handed  way. 

During  her  first  season,  which  concluded  on  June  5th,  she 
acted  eighty  times,  during  her  second,  fifty-three  times.  The 
first  year  she  essayed  seven  characters,  in  the  following  order  : — 

Isabella  (Southerne's  Isabella  ;  or  The  Fatal  Marriage,  1694). 

Euphrasia  (Murphy's  Grecian  Daughter ',  1772). 

Jane  Shore  (Rowe's  Jane  Shore,  1713). 

Louisa  Montague  (Hull's  Fatal  Interview,  1782). 

Calista  (Rowe's  Fair  Penitent,  1 703). 

Belvidera  (Otway's  Venice  Preserved,  1682). 

Zara  (Congreve's  Mourning  Bride,  1697). 

In  her  Memoranda  of  1782-83,  occurs  one  specially  under- 
standable remark.  Speaking  of  the  overwhelming  success,  first, 
of  Isabella,  then,  of  her  next  character,  she  writes,  "  I  well 
remember  my  fears  and  ready  tears  on  each  subsequent  effort, 
lest  I  should  fall  from  my  high  exaltation." 

Time  is  the  trier  of  talent,  and  each  new  character  Mrs. 
Siddons  impersonated  more  positively  proved  her  Promethean 
spark  to  be  no  penny  firework.  The  glowing,  graceful  creature, 
with  her  marvellously  arresting  manner  and  her  terrible 
concentration,  recalling  Mrs.  Gibber  in  her  pathos,  rivalling 
Garrick  in  all  but  his  universality,  "  has,"  wrote  Davies,  "  like  a 
resistless  torrent  .  .  borne  down  all  before  her." 


VI 
THE   WAY   OF  HER  GENIUS 

INCERITY  is  the  pulse  of  fine  acting,  and  Mrs. 
Siddons,  one  of  the  sincerest  of  feminine  personal- 
ities, possessed  the  quality  at  the  heart  of  her  genius. 
Anna  Seward  found  -that,  she  simply  played  as  a  woman  of 
fine  understanding  and  feeling  heart  would  actually  look  and 
speak,  in  the  given  circumstances^Jand  we  may  search  long 
through  the  superabundant  correspondence  of  that  pedantic 
lady  for  another  criticism  as  discerning  and  terse. 

Mrs.  Siddons  played  from  nature,  and  her  own  conception, 
for,  of-ooMsse,  her  apprehension  of  '  nature '  was  determined  and 
modified  by  temperament.  Tkat  ishe  considered,  seriously  and 
attentively,  each  line  she  uttered,vtier  manuscript  Memoranda 
on  Lady  Macbeth,  included  in  Campbell's  'Life'  of  her,  afford 
collateral  assurance.  Sir  -Walter  Scott  tells  us  that,  ^hen 
dispraising  her  brother  John's  determinedly  classic  postures, 
she  showed,  by  practical  exposition,  that  the  braced  attitude 
induced  by  concentrated  feeling  can  be,  no  matter  how  un- 
beautiful,  more  expressive  than  the  most  elaborately  graceful 
pose  plastique.  She  stood  erect,  pressed  her  knees  closely  against 
each  other,  curved  her  feet  inwards,  held  her  elbows  to  her 
sides,  placed  her  hands  upright  together,  and,  in  this  attitude, 
that  of  the  Egyptian  statues  Lord  Lansdowne  had  shown  her 
at  Lansdowne  House,  she  pronounced  Lear's  curse.  The 
heightened  effect  from  the  narrow,  contracted  body  and  the 
rigidity  of  the  muscles  made  Scott's  '  hair  rise  and  flesh  creep/ 
It  is  interesting  to  find  the  English  actress  whose  name  we 
intimately  associatemith  the  classic,  static,  stately  style  giving 
a  lesson  in  realism  a  entrance.  '••  We  are  reminded  of  Mme 


THE  WAY  OF  HER  GENIUS  71 

de  StaeTs  kindred  comment,  in  Corinne,  on  the  way  Mrs. 
Siddons  played  the  scene  in  Isabella,  where  she  kneels  to  Count 
Baldwin : — 

"  Uactrice  la  plus  noble  dans  ses  manieres,  madame  Siddons, 
ne  perd  rien  de  sa  dignite  quand  elle  se  prosterne  contre  terre.  II 
riy  a  rien  qui  ne  puisse  etre  admirable,  quand  une  Emotion  intime 

£  entrained 
Acting  consists  of  two  main  ingredients,  imitation  and 
artistic  identification.  A  mere  mimic  catches  manner  and 
mannerism,  a  true  actor  gives  the  mind  with  the  manner.  This 
power  of  temporary  identification  was  pre-eminently  Mrs. 
Siddons's.  She  worked  from  within  outward  ;  first,  by  yielding 
herself  to  the  spontaneous  flashes  of  her  sensibility,  she  became 
the  person  represented ;  then,  inevitably,  brought  out  the 
external  indications,  peculiar  and  personal.34 
L-  Other  actors  marvelled  _at- the  well-controlled,  self-reserving 
'  identification  '  they  must  have  deeply  envied.  Charles  Mayne 
Young,  who  acted  with  Mrs.  Siddons,  gave,  in  a  word,  the 
explanation  of  it.  "She  was,"  he  said,  "the  most  lofty-minded 
actress  I  ever  beheld.  .  .  .i-From  the  first  moment  to  the  last,  she 
was,  according  to  theatric  parlance, '  in  the  character.'  'p  Various 
actors  are  so  variously  constituted  that,  while  Mrs.  Siddons 
took  deliberate  pains  to  maintain,  through  the  intervals  between 
the  scenes,  the  frame  of  mind  proper  to  the  play,  Edmund 
Kean  could  come  out  of  tragedy,  and  straightway  turn  a 
somersault  into  the  greenroom,  and  Rachel  could  parody  the 
thrilling  scene  she  had  that  moment  quitted.  .  It  was  not  in 
'  the  Great  Woman,'  as  Campbell  calls  his  heroine,  to  '  frivol,' 
or  coolly  calculate,  in  the  thick  of  tragedy.  .  One  could  not 
imagine  Garrick's  whisper,  "  Tom,  it  will  do — I  see  it  in  their 
eyes,"  from  her.  The  soul  of  the  artist  in  Mrs.  Siddons  was 
a  deep  lake,  in  Garrick  it  was  a  broad,  transparent  stream. 
At  the  same  time,,j|t  was  only  while  she  was  in  the  part 
that  she  submerged  her  private  self,  and  then,  in  Boaden's 
quaint  words,  "no  recognisance  of  the  most  noble  of  her 
friends  exchanged  the  character  for  the  individual."  Once 
the  fifth  act  was  at  an  eni  she,  too,  returned  to  herself,  like 
the  rational  being  she  was^and  Cumberland,  in  conversation 
with  Rogers,  drew  a  memory-picture  of  her  coming  off  the 


72  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

stage  in  the  flush  of  triumph,  and  walking  to  the  mirror  in  the 
greenroom  to  survey  her  still  agitated  face. 
\^  Whether  speaking  or  silent,  Mrs.  Siddons  acted,  intensely, 
every  moment  of  the  time  she  was  before  the  audiencer.-x  Crabb 
Robinson  describes  her,  as  Margaret  of  Anjou,  when  she  has 
stabbed  Warwick.  "She  .  .  .  staggered  off  the  stage  as  if  drunk 
with  delight  .  .  .  every  limb  showed  the  tumult  of  passion."  She 
was  never  afraid  to  evince  physical  vigour.  Genest  noticed 
that  whereas  less  stalwart  actresses,  in  Milwood  (Lillo's  George 
Barnweir),  let  themselves  be  disarmed,  almost  without  a  struggle, 
she  rushed  past  Trueman,  and  made  her  way  up  to  Thorowgood, 
before  Trueman  could  hold  her  back. 

It  is  clear  that  her  technique  came  easily  to  her.  Her 
genius  had  not,  like  Irving's,  to  chip  a  laborious  way  through 
a  sheath  of  personal  inaptitudes. 

Her  special  magic  lay  in  bits  of  dumb  show,  neither  set 
down  in  the  text  nor  in  marginal  directions.  In  the  Trial,  in 
King  Henry  the  Eighth,  the  way  in  which,  as  Queen  Katharine, 
she  waved  aside  Cardinal  Campeius,  and  more  directly  addressed 
herself  to  Cardinal  Wolsey,  made  the  most  memorable  moment 
of  the  scene. ...  Similarly,  Leigh  Hunt  noted  as  the  best  thing 
in  The  Grecian  Daughter  a  something  out  of  it  which  occurred 
when  the  heroine  had  obtained  for  her  imprisoned  father  un- 
expected assistance  from  the  guard,  Philotas.  "Transported 
with  gratitude,  but  having  nothing  from  the  poet  to  give 
expression  to  her  feelings,  she  starts  with  extended  arms  and 
casts  herself  in  mute  prostration  at  his  feet."  For  action  so 
impulsive  no  one  could  imagine  any  rehearsal,  and  we  read  of 
a  feeling  akin  to  consternation,  on  the  part  of  the  audience, 
that  such  marvellous  power  in  the  expression  of  emotion  should 
be  only  acting. 

The  words  of  a  dramatist  do  not  supply  an  actor  with  much 
more  than  half  of  what  he  expresses.  He  has  to  add  to  the 
words  colour,  light  and  shade,  life.  Some  people  jeer  at  the 
proposition  that  the  actor  creates.  He  no  more  creates  a 
character,  say  they,  than  a  pianist  creates  Beethoven's  Moonlight 
Sonata.  These  people  are,  in  a  shallow  sense,  right.  In  a 
profounder  sense,  they  are  quite  wrong.  To  their  contention 
Fleeming  Jenkin  made  the  best  possible  reply,  when  he  wrote : — 


THE  WAY  OF  HER  GENIUS  73 

"  Let  any  reader  who  thinks  that  there  is  some  one  Hamlet, 
Shakespeare's  Hamlet,  who  could  only  speak  the  speech  in  one 
attitude,  with  one  set  of  tones — open  the  book,  and  in  the 
solitude  of  his  chamber  try  first  to  find  out  the  emotions  which 
Shakespeare  meant  his  Hamlet  to  feel,  and  then  try  to  express 
those  emotions  in  tones  which  would  indicate  them  to  others. 
If  honest  and  clever,  he  will  find  out  after  half  an  hour's  study 
how  little  the  author  has  done  for  the  actor,  how  much  the 
actor  is  called  upon  to  do  for  the  author." l 

From  a  copy  of  Macbeth  annotated  with  MS.  marginalia, 
I  find  Professor  George  Joseph  Bell  going  still  farther.  "  Mrs. 
Siddons,"  he  wrote,  "is  not  before  an  audience.  Her  mind 
wrought  up  in  high  conception  of  her  part — her  eyes  never 
wandering — never  for  a  moment  idle — passion  and  sentiment 
continually  betraying  themselves.  Her  words  are  the  accom- 
paniments of  her  thoughts,  scarcely  necessary  you  would 
imagine  to  the  expression,  but  highly  raising  it  and  giving  the 
full  force  of  poetical  effect." 

C  Mrs.  Siddons  played  without  insisting  overmuch  upon  her 
own  role.  In  any  episode  of  strong  action  (like  the  duel  between 
Lothario  and  Altamont,  in  Rowe's  Fair  Penitent)  where  she 
was  not  immediately  concerned,  she  would  efface  herself.  Her 
capacity  to  evolve  for  every  character  its  characteristic  manners 
totally  preserved  her  work  from  that  melancholy  accompani- 
ment of  all  but  the  best-imagined  acting,  inappropriate  business. 
Nor  was  she  ever  known  to  be  trivial,  or  too  detailed,  in 
conditions  that  demanded  exaltation,  and  oblivion  of  small 
surroundings.  "3 

"  No  trap,  no  lure  for  mean  applause  is  laid  ; 
No  start,  no  languish  to  the  Pit  is  paid," 

wrote  one  of  the  many  tributary  poeticules,  and  to  the  extra- 
ordinary single-mindedness  of  her  acting  those  best  qualified  to 
judge,  viz.  her  fellow-actors,  bore  witness.  Charles  Young 
sounded  this  noble  characteristic  when  he  said,  "She  never 
indulged  in  imagination  at  the  expense  of  truth."  The  word, 
truth,  seemed  spontaneously  to  leap  up  whenever  adequate 
observers  described  her  art.  It  fulfilled  Plato's  immortal 
definition  of  beauty  as  the  splendour  of  truth. 

1  Papers,  Literary,  Scientific,  etc.,  by  Fleeming  Jenkin,  i.  46.    1887. 


74  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

Lady  Charlotte  Bury  was  told,  in  conversation,  of  how 
John  Brown,  the  painter,  had  asked  Mrs.  Siddons  whether  she 
thought  it  necessary,  in  order  to  produce  an  effect  on  the 
audience,  that  a  part  should  be  acted  above  the  truth  of  nature. 
Her  reply — as  it  filtered  through  three  reporters — was  as  follows : 
"  No,  Sir,  but  undoubtedly  up  to  nature  in  her  highest  colours  ; 
otherwise,  except  we  performed  to  audiences  composed  of  such 
persons  as  I  have  now  the  honour  to  be  conversing  with,  the 
effect  would  not  be  bold  enough  in  the  boxes,  nor  even  in  the 
pit.  But  to  you,  Sir,  who  are  a  painter,  a  judge  of  paintings,  I 
need  not  explain  myself  more  particularly  on  this  point." 

Because  her  own  personality  was  simple,  Mrs.  Siddons  was 
able  to  give  to  each  of  her  impersonations  an  extraordinary 
unity  of  design,  and  this  we  may  take  to  have  been  the  root 
quality  of  every  new  triumph  she  made.  The  parts  of  the 
character  were  subordinated  to  the  whole,  and  every  action  and 
gesture  was  related  to  one  single  mainspring  of  feeling.  This 
did  not  make  for  a  variegated  style,  but  it  led,  most  emphatic- 
ally, to  intense  and  convincing  effects. 

We  find  a  score  of  testimonies  to  a  point  which,  after  all, 
counts  for  less  than  an  unversed  spectator  might  imagine,  viz. 
the  copious  tears  shed  by  her.  Shakespeare  was  too  familiar 
with  the  histrionic  temperament  to  set  much  store  by  the  fact 
that  the  stroller  in  Hamlet  wept,  and  turned  pale,  for  Hecuba. 
Tom  Davies  mentions  that,  in  the  critical  act  of  The  Fair 
Penitent,  Mrs.  Siddons's  increasing  pallor  was  seen  through  her 
rouge.  Once,  at  least,  in  her  fictive  agitation,  as  Arpasia,  in 
Rowe's  Tamerlane,  she  fainted  in  earnest,  which  caused  *  a  rush 
from  the  pit  and  boxes  to  enquire  for  her.'  Miss  Kelly,  in  the 
dramatic  'Recollections'  she  gave,  in  1833,  at  the  Strand 
Theatre,  told  how  when  Mrs.  Siddons,  as  Constance,  used  to 
weep  over  her  (as  Arthur)  her  collar  was  always  wet  with  tear.s. 
Mrs.  Siddons  was  struck  by  her  own  facility  for  crying  being 
greater  on  some  nights  than  on  others.  This  appears  from  a 
letter  written  by  her,  and  first  printed  in  Payne  Collier's  An  Old 
Marts  Diary : — 

"  i  Nw,  1805 

"  To  speak  sincerely,  and  as  it  were  to  myself,  making  my 
own  confession,  I  never  played  more  to  my  own  satisfaction 


THE  WAY  OF  HER  GENIUS  75 

than  last  night  in  Belvidera:  if  I  may  so  say,  it  was  hardly 
acting,  it  seemed  to  me,  and  I  believe  to  the  audience,  almost 
reality ;  and  I  can  assure  you  that  in  one  of  my  scenes  with  my 
brother  John,  who  was  the  Jaffier  of  the  night  (a  part  of  which 
he  is  not  very  fond),  the  real  tears  '  coursed  one  another  down 
my  innocent  nose'  so  abundantly  that  my  handkerchief  was 
quite  wet  with  them  when  I  got  off  the  stage.  ...  I  never  was 
more  applauded  in  Belvidera  certainly ;  though,  of  course,  as  a 
piece  of  mere  acting,  it  is  not  at  all  equal  to  my  *  Lady '  [Macbeth]. 
Belvidera,  I  assure  you  again,  was  hardly  acting  last  night :  I 
felt  every  word  as  if  I  were  the  real  person,  and  not  the 
representative." 

As  is  the  way  with  great  actors,  Mrs.  Siddons,  in  almost 
every  part,  gave  special  vitality  to  some  one  line,  which  stamped 
it  for  ever,  while,  for  the  playgoer,  all  surrounding  recollections 
might  have  faded.  Frederick  Reynolds  speaks  of  three  separate 
lines  she  made  thrillingly  impressive — 

in  Venice  Preserved, 

"Was  it  a  miserable  day?" 

in  The  Mourning  Bride, 

"No — not  the  Princess'  self," 

and,  in  King  Henry  the  Eighth,  the  widely  famed 

"  Lord  cardinal, —     *-\ 
To  you  I  speak." 

Mrs.  Trench,  the  mother  of  the  Archbishop  of  Dublin, 
enthusiastically  recorded  the  magical  manner  in  which,  in  a 
play  whose  title,  plot,  and  characters  were  all  forgotten,  the 
great  actress  said,  to  a  servant  who  had  betrayed  her, 

"There's  gold  for  thee  ;  but  see  my  face  no  more." 

Some  of  these  instances  give  an  idea  of  the  power  Mrs. 
Siddons  must  have  possessed  of  vivifying  what  was  in  itself  life- 
less. The  power  of  a  true  inflection  of  voice  is  incalculable,  and 
(as  those  blessed  with  oral  memory  best  remember)  all  the 
picturesque  detail  in  the  world  does  not  move  an  audience  like 
one  sentence,  or  one  cry,  given  with  the  right  intonation,  ^^oo 
r~  Another  convincing  proof  of  her  grip  over  the  house  is  the 
witness  we  find  to  her,  power  of  preventing  the  emergence  of 


;6  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

any  chance  ludicrous  impression  in  tragedy.  Of  a  scene  in 
Congreve's  Zara,  for  instance,  Tom  Davies  writes : — 

"  The  expressions  of  anger  and  resentment,  in  the  captive 
queen,  seldom  fail  to  excite  laughter.  Mrs.  Porter,  who  was 
deservedly  admired  in  Zara,  and  Mrs.  Pritchard,  her  successor 
in  that  part,  could  not,  with  all  their  skill,  prevent  the  risibility 
of  the  audience  in  this  interview.  Mrs.  Siddons  alone  pre- 
serves the  dignity  and  truth  of  character,  unmixed  with  any 
incitement  to  mirth,  from  the  countenance,  expression,  or 
action." 

We  read  that  Clairon,  when  she  advanced  to  the  footlights, 
could,  by  the  blaze  of  her  eyes,  make  the  (then  standing)  pit 
recoil  several  feet,  but,  certainly,  no  other  English  actress  can 
ever  have  had  such  a  genius  for  sheer  looking  as  Sarah  Siddons. 
The  movements  of  her  eyes  anticipated  her  words,  and  made  a 
dramatic  pause  more  speaking  than  the  sentence  that  followed 
it.  No  one  ever  knew  better  than  she  how  to  interpret  the 
silences  of  Shakespeare.  *"-*  - 

Her  artistic  pauses  of  suspense  and  for  the  isolation  of 
weighty  words  were  not  identical  with  the  more  utilitarian  pauses 
she  partly  made,  partly  was  given  by  the  enthusiastic  house,  at 
the  end  of  crescendo  efforts.  Six  years  after  she  left  Bath,  she 
asked  Whalley,  who  had  spent  the  greater  part  of  the  inter- 
vening time  on  the  Continent,  whether  he  thought  her  acting 
had  improved  in  the  interval.  He  replied  in  the  affirmative, 
but  added  (greatly  daring)  that  he  regretted  to  observe  she 
had  acquired  a  stage  trick  of  pausing  after  certain  sentences, 
to  receive  the  expected  applause.  In  London,  throughout  the 
long  sequence  of  years  during  which  she  was  the  idol  of  fashion, 
she  used  definitely  to  rely  upon  these  interruptions,  for  rest  and 
restoration.  "  Acting  Isabella,  for  instance,"  said  she,  "  out 
of  London,  is  double  fatigue ;  there  the  loud  and  long  applause 
at  the  great  points  and  striking  situations  invigorated  the 
system,  and  the  time  it  occupied  recruited  the  health  and 
nerve." 

In  spite  of  Lady  Macbeth,  one  cannot  help  imagining 
that,  in  wicked  characters,  Mrs.  Siddons  must  have  suffered 
(in  the  stage  sense)  from  her  own  personality.  It  is  hard  to 
believe  that  she  was  ever  as  criminal  as  Mme  Bernhardt  is 


'•MRS.  SIDDONS.     TRAGIC   ACTRESS.     PAINTER   UNKNOWN 


THE  WAY  OF  HER  GENIUS  77 

in   Phedre.      In    Lady    Macbeth,   it   is   noteworthy  that    she 
made — 

"  Had  he  not  resembled 
My  father  as  he  slept  I  had  done  't," 

by   the   exquisite   feeling   she   put   into   it,   one   of   the   great 
points  in  the  drama. 

It  is  clear  that  the  simplicity  of  Mrs.  Siddons  was  different, 
in  kind,  from  that  of  the  Garrick  school.  The  question  that 
remains  for  the  student  of  the  historical  stage  is  whether,  to  a 
modern  audience,  her  effects  would  not  have  appeared  effects 
of  harsh,  melodramatic  brilliancy  and  gigantic,  over-emphasised 
shadow — though,  after  all  that  has  been  cited,  the  suspicion  of 
any  unnaturalness  seems  a  treason.  We  know  that,  in  theatrical 
appreciation,  fashions  change.  As  to  the  staginess  of  John 
Kemble,  condemned  even  by  his  contemporaries,  there  can 
be  no  question.  We  know,  moreover,  that  the  family  ideal 
was  classic,  and  a  reaction  from  the  flexible  impressionism 
of  Garrick  and  his  followers.  In  her  Record  of  a  Girlhood^ 
Mrs.  Kemble  states  what  the  family  ideal  was — 

"...  A  noble  ideal  beauty  was  what  we  were  taught  to 
consider  the  proper  object  and  result  of  all  art.  In  their 
especial  vocation  this  tendency  caused  my  family  to  be 
accused  of  formalism  and  artificial  pedantry ;  and  the  so- 
called  '  classical '  school  of  acting,  to  which  they  belonged, 
has  frequently  since  their  time  been  unfavourably  compared 
with  what,  by  way  of  contrast,  has  been  termed  the  realistic 
or  natural  style  of  art." 

In  Mrs.  Siddons's  own  day  there  was  a  minority  who 
dissented  from  the  general  laudations  of  her  naturalness.  One 
who  belonged  to  this  minority  was  Abraham  Hayward's  '  Lady 
of  Quality,'  Miss  Wynn.  She  wrote : — 

"  Mrs.  Siddons  in  her  prime  is  certainly  a  bright  recollection, 
but  I  did  not  feel  for  her  acting  quite  the  enthusiasm  that 
most  people  profess.  It  was  too  artificial  for  my  taste:  her 
attitudes  were  fine  and  graceful,  but  they  always  seemed  to 
me  the  result  of  study." 

Such  criticisms  as  this  must  be  taken  into  consideration. 
On  the  other  hand,  we  may  remember  Mrs.  Clive's  ringing 
verdict  that  her  acting  was  '  all  truth  and  daylight/  a  judgment 


78  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

particularly  weighty,  as  proceeding  from  a  woman  of  strong 
understanding,  who  had  herself  been  a  princess  among  the 
impressionists.  We  have  to  separate  the  ranting  contemporary 
tragedies  in  which  Mrs.  Siddons  played  from  herself  and  her 
method  of  playing  them.  We  may  also  bear  in  mind  that  the 
too  familiar  anecdotes  of  her  stilted  phraseology  in  everyday 
life  are  not  proofs  of  her  having  been  stagy  in  the  theatre. 

The  balance  of  probability  inclines  one  to  think  that  the 
greatness  of  her  imagination  irradiated  a  conception  and 
method  which,  in  the  hands  of  a  player  endowed  merely  with 
talent,  would  have  lacked  power  to  represent  the  variety  and 
play  of  life.  We  might,  perhaps,  venture  so  far  as  to  think 
that,  great  tragic  actress  as  Mrs.  Siddons  was,  she  might  have 
been,  in  her  tragedy,  still  greater  if,  in  her  personality,  she  had 
possessed  a  few  grains  more  of  humour  and  of  comedy.  Stage 
tragedy  which  rarely  admits  even  irony  to  temper  it  is,  of 
necessity,  perilously  far  removed  from  the  natural  world  over 
which  God's  good  sun  shines.  But  here,  again,  genius  such  as 
Mrs.  Siddons's,  like  nature  itself,  harmonises  contradictions, 
and  makes  whatever  it  does  seem  right.  While  her  audiences 
gazed  at  her,  they  felt  greatness,  as,  in  our  day,  we  felt  great- 
ness in  Henry  Irving. 

Fire  is  the  quality  that  distinguishes  the  great  from  the 
merely  good  player,  and  it  was  this  in  Mrs.  Siddons  which 
raised  her  acting  far  above  Kemble's.  With  her,  however 
elaborate  her  previous  study,  it  was  always,  in  the  result,  pains- 
concealing,  thanks  to  her  unfailing  capacity  for  momentary 
fire.  Hers  was  not  the  kind  of  nature  that  wastes  its  nervous 
force  over  afterthoughts  and  uncertainties.  .  We  have  too  little 
record  as  to  how  she  accepted  suggestions  from  authoritative 
outsiders.  We  know  that  when  Sheridan,  her  Manager,  tried 
to  make  her  alter  her  action  of  setting  down  the  candlestick 
in  the  sleep-walking  scene,  she  was  obdurate.  We  are  left  to 
believe  that  she  principally  relied  on  herself  in  matters  that 
belonged  to  her  own  scope. 

It  is  well  worth  noticing  that  her  art  bore  two  fruitages. 
The  first  was  the  expression  of  what  Boaden  terms  '  gentle 
domestic  woe,'  the  second  was  the  expression  of  earth-shaking 
Shakespearean  characters,  Constance  and  Lady  Macbeth, 


THE  WAY  OF  HER  GENIUS  79 

mellowing,  more  and  more,  as  her  physique  altered,  into  Queen 
Katharine  and  Volumnia^  j  We  have  it  from  Horace  Walpole 
that  when,  during  her  earlier  period,  she  was  asked  to  play 
Lady  Macbeth  and  Glover's  Medea,  she  replied,  '  No,  she  did 
not  look  on  them  as  female  characters.' 

The  Ettrick  Shepherd,  in  apology  for  the  defective  plots 
of  his  stories,  represented  himself  saying  to  Scott,  "  Dear 
Mr.  Scott,  a  man  canna  do  the  thing  that  he  canna  do."  In 
the  case  of  a  woman  it  is  much  the  same.  The  misfortune  is 
that,  by  some  malice  of  their  lutins,  both  men  and  women 
appear  impelled  to  do,  for  their  own  gratification,  not  the  thing 
they  can,  but  the  thing  they  '  canna.'  And  thus  Mrs.  Siddons 
too  long  remained  unpersuaded  as  to  her  inferiority  in  comedy. 
No  outsider  was  influential  enough  to  limit  her  Rosalind  and 
Lady  Restless  to  theatres  outside  London,  as  Rachel's  advisers 
limited  her  Celimene  to  theatres  outside  Paris. 

Mrs.  Siddons's  was  an  age  of  genuinely  comic  actresses. 
The  names  of  Abington,  Farren,  and  Jordan  recall  a  trio  of 
comedy  queens,  variously  gifted.  To  many  persons,  including 
the  present  writer,  perfect  comedy  acting  appears  a  higher  and 
maturer  thing  than  the  finest  tragedy.  Tragedy  acting  is 
emotional,  whereas  comedy  must  be  intellectual.  But  the 
actor  has  never  lived  who  was  equally  great  in  both.  Garrick, 
in  all  probability,  was  at  his  best  when  he  did  not  go  deep 
below  the  surface.  His  expression  in  Garrick  between  Tragedy 
and  Comedy  leaves  no  doubt  as  to  what  so  keen  an  observer  as 
Reynolds  deemed  his  stronger  gift. 

Mrs.  Siddons's  comedy  always  appeared  forced.  It  was  a 
conscious  unbending,  as  though  Thalia  were  Melpomene's 
schoolgirl  sister.  The  idea  of  Mrs.  Siddons  acting,  as  she  did, 
Mrs.  Riot  in  a  trivial  burlesque  like  Garrick's  Lethe  is  unseemly, 
and  even  shocking.  "  Who,"  said  a  gentleman,  speaking  of 
this  to  Lady  Charlotte  Campbell,  "  would  have  wished  to  see 
Sir  Isaac  Newton  auditing  the  accounts  of  the  mint?  or  who 
would  enter  into  the  enjoyments  of  a  catch  or  a  glee  sung  by 
Lord  Chief  Justice  Mansfield ;  or  a  solo  on  the  German  flute 
by  the  King  of  Prussia  ;  or  a  fandango  danced  by  the  Empress 
of  Russia  ?  " 

It  must  be  easier  to  act   tragedy  than  comedy.     Macbeth 


8o  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

almost  acts  itself,  and  it  was  Macready's  pet  remark  that  no 
actor  ever  failed  as  Hamlet ;  but  to  act  Lady  Teazle,  or  Mrs. 
Millamant,  delicate  judgment,  vivacity,  and  breeding  are  re- 
quired. Mrs.  Siddons  had  not  the  sprightliness,  or  natural 
gaiety  of  disposition,  that  is  indispensable  for  success  in  comedy, 
nor  did  she  possess  the  great  comedy  '  gift  of  pace '.  on  which 
Miss  Ellen  Terry,  in  her  Autobiography,  laid  so  much  stress. 

Had  she  been  a  good  comedian  she  would  have  made  a 
more  competent  woman  of  society,  where  all  expression  is 
high  comedy.  She  lacked  the  necessary  versatility.  At  drums, 
she  was  apt  to  remain  heavily  silent.  Witness  Campbell's 
account  of  her,  at  a  reception  in  Paris,  in  1814,  standing,  for 
some  noticeable  length  of  time,  mumchance  beside  the  Duke  of 
Wellington,  '  after  a  first  mutual  recognizance.'  She  was  grave 
by  nature.  Her  temperament  was  a  tragedy  temperament, 
her  face  a  tragedy  face. 

We  read  that  she  could,  'in  her  slow  way,'  tell  laughable 
stories  laughably,  or,  even  (having  first '  ordered  the  parlour-door 
to  be  made  fast '),  give  the  speeches  of  Sir  Anthony  Absolute  so 
as  to  convulse  a  family  party ;  and  that  she  was  not  without 
a  limited,  unrejoicing  sense  of  humour  is  further  demonstrated 
by  passages  in  her  correspondence,  as,  for  instance,  the  long 
description  she  gives  of  the  woman  who,  in  August  1782,  rode 
in  the  stage  coach  with  her,  from  Bath  to  Weymouth,  of  which 
this  sentence  is  a  sample :  "  Her  neck,  which  was  a  thin  scrag 
of  a  quarter  of  a  yard  long,  and  the  colour  of  a  walnut,  she 
wore  uncovered  for  the  solace  of  all  beholders."  To  this  we 
may  candidly  prefer  Campbell's  assurance  that  Mrs.  Siddons 
was  not  too  vain  or  solemn  to  join  in  the  general  laugh  on 
herself  when,  in  a  dismal  tragedy,  having  to  make  an  ardent 
exit  with  a  baby  in  her  arms,  she  set  a  precedent  for  Tilly 
Slowboy  by  knocking  the  baby's  wooden  head — and  with  a 
resounding  thud — against  the  doorpost. 


VII 
SOME   EARLY   PARTS 

ANY  ONE  who  has  inherited  that  whitish  elephant,  an 
eighteenth  century  library,  must  have  been  struck  by 
the  extent  to  which  its  play-books  outnumber  its  novels. 
In  Mrs.  Siddons's  day,  every  play  that  ran  nine  nights  appeared, 
shortly  afterwards,  in  book  form.  "  The  crowd  at  a  manager's 
door  electrically  acts  upon  a  publisher's,"  wrote  an  anxious — 
and  successful — dramatist,  Mrs.  Inchbald.  An  unacted  tragedy 
was  never  bought.  Evidently,  there  was  no  demand  for  a 
drama  for  mental  performance  only,  though  Byron  thought 
there  was  room  for  something  of  the  kind,  and  Scott  wrote,  in 
a  letter  to  Allan  Cunningham,  "We  certainly  do  not  always 
read  with  the  greatest  pleasure  those  plays  which  act  best." 

A  century  and  one  or  two  decades  ago,  at  Drury  Lane  or 
Covent  Garden,  an  author  received  £33,  6s.  8d.  for  the  first 
nine  nights  of  his  play,  with  the  further  agreement  that,  if  the 
play  failed  to  bring  £200  a  night,  the  proprietors  were  at  liberty 
to  withdraw  it.  '  Acting  rights '  were,  as  yet,  inchoate  and  ill- 
defined. 

If,  throughout  Mrs.  Siddons's  life,  she  had  acted  in  none  but 
Shakespeare's  plays,  it  would  be  possible  to  write  of  her  inter- 
pretation of  women,  her  delivery  of  lines,  her  '  business '  in 
scenes,  with  a  hope  of  being  readable ;  if,  even,  her  non- 
Shakespearean  parts  had  been  as  near  actuality  as  those  of 
Mr.  Barrie,  Mr.  Galsworthy,  and  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw,  the  com- 
mentator would  still  be  able  to  call  up  characters  possessing 
something  that  may  fairly  be  termed  momentum.  But  the 
tongues  of  angels  would  hardly  avail  to  arouse  curiosity  con- 
cerning either  Congreve's  Zara  (The  Mourning  Bride]  or  Aaron 
Hill's  Zara  (Zara,  adapted  from  Voltaire's  ' Zaire},  still  less 
6 


82  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

concerning  two  characters  whose  names  are  so  bewilderingly 
alike  as  Arpasia  (Rowe's  Tamerlane]  and  Euphrasia  (Murphy's 
Grecian  Daughter}.  What  is  remarkable  is  that  our,  in  other 
directions,  level-headed  ancestors  should  have  cared  to  see 
even  Mrs.  Siddons,  '  every  week,' x  in  one  of  these  simulacra  of 
classicality,  when,  nowadays,  such  solid  antiques  as  Julius 
Csesar,  Cleopatra,  Nero,  and  Ulysses  require,  to  bring  houses, 
the  utmost  aid  from  Mr.  Joseph  Harker,  Mr.  Percy  Macquoid, 
and  the  machinist. 

Not  counting  Hull,  four  of  Mrs.  Siddons's  five  first  season 
authors  were  already  classics,  viz.  Southerne,  Otway,  Congreve, 
and  Rowe,  and  their  heroines  stock  characters.  Murphy,  alone, 
was  contemporary  with  the  actress,  and  no  one,  then  or  now, 
could  hopefully  contend  that  his  Grecian  Daughter  was  com- 
parable to  the  work  of  the  elder  men.  As  eighteenth  century 
acting  greatened  to  Garrick  and  Siddons,  eighteenth  century 
tragedy  proportionately  deteriorated. 

Next  to  Southerne's  Isabella,  there  was  no  part  in  Mrs. 
Siddons's  repertory  she  made  more  impressive  than  Belvidera  in 
Otway's  Venice  Preserved.  Not  only  did  the  ultra-susceptible 
Anna  Seward's  tears  fall  'in  full  and  ceaseless  streams'  over 
this  'soul-harrowing'  impersonation;  it  drew  half-stifled  sobs 
from  all  London.  When,  in  1786,  Mrs.  Siddons  made  a  single 
and  'complimentary'  appearance  at  Covent  Garden  (with  the 
pit  at  box  prices)  for  the  benefit  of  the  widow  of  Henderson — 
untimely  cut  off  four  months  earlier — it  was  on  Belvidera  she 
relied  to  attract  a  packed  and  profitable  house.  One  of  the 
longest  female  parts  in  English  drama,  it  would  be  hard  to  find 
another  so  opulent — as  actors  say,  so  juicy — for  a  competent 
representative.  Elizabeth  Barry,  Susanna  Gibber,  and  Anne 
Barry  had,  each  in  turn,  made  a  chef  d'ozuvre  of  Belvidera. 

The  central  idea — the  donnee  of  Venice  Preserved  is,  it  may 
be  remembered,  the  shame  and  downfall  brought  upon  an 
originally  noble  nature,  by  excessive  uxoriousness — a  unique 
theme,  as  far  as  I  know,  in  acting  drama.  Belvidera's  husband, 
Jaffier,  engages,  for  her  sake,  in  a  murderous  conspiracy  against 
the  Venetian  senate,  of  which  her  unfatherly  father  is  a  member. 

1  and  cried  their  '  eyes  out  every  time  '—Horace  Walpole  to  Mason,  December  7th, 
1782. 


SOME  EARLY  PARTS  83 

A  few  hours  later,  Jaffier,  yielding  to  her  importunities,  betrays 
his  accomplices,  among  whom  is  his  close  friend,  Pierre.  The 
finest  scene  in  the  play  is  the  dialogue,  on  Pierre's  scaffold, 
between  these  two  men. 

Since  the  days  of  Dick  Minim,  Johnson's  Critic  who  blamed 
Otway  'for  making  a  conspirator  his  hero,'  opinions  on  the 
character  of  Belvidera  have  differed.  Roden  Noel  considered 
her  '  own  sister  to  Cordelia,  Imogen,  Desdemona.'  Walter  Scott 
believed  she  had  rightly  drawn  more  tears  than  Juliet.  Lord 
Byron,  who  described  himself  as,  elsewhere,  a  great  admirer  of 
Otway,  styled  Belvidera  (and  the  fact  that  she  was  an  imaginary 
character  may,  perhaps,  excuse  the  quotation  of  his  energetic 
phraseology)  "that  maudlin  bitch  of  chaste  lewdness  and 
blubbering  curiosity  whom  I  utterly  despise,  abhor,  and 
detest." 

It  may  be  noted  that  Mrs.  Siddons's  fame  for  pathos  is 
founded  on  parts  outside  Shakespeare.  In  Venice  Preserved,  the 
three  speeches,  all  of  the  briefest,  she  wrote  in  letters  of  fire, 
were  '  O,  thou  unkind  one ! '  when  Jaffier  makes  her  a  hostage 
for  his  good  faith  with  the  conspirators,  *  My  father ! '  when  she 
learns  the  purpose  and  extent  of  the  conspiracy — into  these 
words  which  she  repeated,  from  Jaffier's  '  To  kill  thy  father,' 
she  put  a  horror  that  chilled  the  blood — and,  finally,  the  much- 
praised  '  Remember  twelve ! '  when  she  is  hoping,  by  wifely 
tenderness,  to  undermine  her  husband's  oath. 

With  her  superlative  power  of  self-excitation,  splendid 
presence,  and  a  face  malleable  to  every  development  of 
Otway's  story,  she  was,  one  can  entirely  believe,  '  electrifying,' 
as  Boaden  says,  at  the  moment  when  Jaffier  (in  remorse  at 
having  betrayed  Pierre)  threatens  to  stab  her,  and  she  springs 
into  his  arms,  with 

4 'Now  then,  kill  me!" 

In  Otway's  The  Orphan,  she  played  the  character  in  which 
the  whole  interest  centres.  In  this  drama  of  a  wronged  wife, 
painful  and  '  unpleasant '  though  it  is,  she  found  a  part  more 
truly  sympathetic  to  her  personality  than  Belvidera.  It  was, 
from  the  theatrical  standpoint,  less  effective,  and,  moreover,  the 
action  of  The  Orphan  suffers  from  that  gravest  of  dramatic 
faults,  inadequate  causation.  Yet  an  actress  could  hardly  hope 


84  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

for  lovelier  lines,  outside  Shakespeare,  than  occur  in  Monimia's 
dying  scene — 

"  I'm  here  ;  who  calls  me  ? 

Methought  I  heard  a  voice 

Sweet  as  the  shepherd's  pipe  upon  the  mountains, 
When  all  his  little  flock's  at  feed  before  him. 
i.  ....... 

When  I'm  laid  low  i'  the  grave,  and  quite  forgotten, 

Mayst  thou  be  happy  in  a  fairer  bride  ! 

But  none  can  ever  love  thee  like  Monimia. 

When  I  am  dead, — as  presently  I  shall  be, 

For  the  grim  tyrant  grasps  my  heart  already, — 

Speak  well  of  me ;  and  if  thou  find  ill  tongues 

Too  busy  with  my  fame,  don't  hear  me  wronged ; 

'Twill  be  a  noble  justice  to  the  memory 

Of  a  poor  wretch  once  honoured  with  thy  love. 

How  my  head  swims  ! — 'tis  very  dark.     Good-night  !  " 

It  was  not  in  Otway,  but  in  Congreve,  that  Dr.  Johnson, 
when  giving  his  better  judgment  one  of  its  recurrent  holidays, 
discovered  the  '  paragraph '  he  declared  superior  to  any  other 
descriptive  passage  in  English  poetry.  To  modern  readers, 
Congreve  stands  for  the  creator  of,  in  one  sense,  the  purest 
comedy  that  exists,  the  mordant  comedy,  and,  in  spite  of  Lamb's 
plea,  the  grim,  real  comedy,  of  Lady  Wishfort  and  Witwoud  and 
Millamant,  while  we  regard  his  one  tragedy  as  uninspired  and 
negligible.  Yet  it  is  worth  remembering  that  The  Mourning 
Bride  contains,  in  addition  to  Johnson's  piece  about  the  cathedral, 
one  of  the  best-known  couplets  in  English  drama — and  never 
was  couplet  better  adapted  to  an  explosive  exit,  viz. — 

"Heav'n  has  no  rage  like  love  to  hatred  turn'd, 
Nor  Hell  a  fury  like  a  woman  scorn'd," 

and,  moreover,  opens  with  one  of  the  most  hackneyed  lines  in 
poetry, 

"Music  has  charms  to  soothe  a  savage  breast." 

All  through,  there  is  no  penury  of  ideas  in  The  Mourning 
Bride,  and  with  Zara,  the  more  vehement  of  its  two  female 
characters,  executed  in  the  grand  style  of  Mrs.  Siddons, 
without  puny  graces  or  small  originalities,  it  was,  to  the 
taste  of  our  great-grandsires,  an  impressive  performance.  In 
reading  the  play,  the  captive  Moorish  queen  appears  merely 


.;• 

4 

SOME  EARLY  PARTS  85 

a  tigress;  Mrs.  Siddons,  at  least,  made  her  a  magnificent 
tigress.  Godwin  told  Campbell  it  was  worth  a  day's  journey  to 
see  her  walk  down  the  stage  in  The  Mourning  Bride.  In  the  last 
scene,  Zara  makes  away  with  herself  by  means  of '  the  bowl/  and 
here  Mrs.  Siddons  went  in  for  painful  physical  realism — as  she 
also  did  in  the  fifth  act  of  Jane  Shore.  No  previous  actress 
had  thrown  such  variety  into  death.  Some  one  who  saw  her 
Zara  in  Dublin  wrote,  naively,  but  convincingly,  as  follows : — 

"  Her  resolution  of  mind  visible  on  drinking  the  poison,  at 
the  same  time  the  natural  antipathy  she  showed  to  it,  was 
strikingly  just ;  but  the  apparent  working  of  the  deadly  draught 
was  beyond  any  representation  I  ever  beheld ;  at  that  moment 
I  quite  forgot  the  exalted  soul  of  the  beautiful  Zara,  and  could 
only  feel  for  the  agony  and  torture  under  which  a  fellow- 
creature  suffered." 

On  Mrs.  Siddons's  other  Zara  there  seems  no  need  to  dwell, 
beyond  observing  that  it  argues  more  vitality  and  inspiration 
than  words  can  say  on  the  part  of  Mrs.  Gibber,  Spranger 
Barry,  Garrick,  and  Mrs.  Siddons  that  they,  each  in  turn,  made 
so  dull  an  affair  as  Hill's  adaptation  from  Voltaire  seem  puissant 
and  alive.  "  A  great  actor,"  said  Mme  de  Stae'l,  speaking, 
particularly,  of  Talma,  "becomes,  by  his  accents  and  his 
physiognomy,  the  second  author  of  his  parts."  Far  more  than 
apparent  authorship — which  an  actor  of  later  eighteenth  century 
drama  might  reasonably  have  repudiated — was  done  for  Zara 
by  the  artists  just  mentioned.  By  the  splendour  of  their  own 
imagination,  they  hypnotised  the  audience  into  taking  a  piece 
of  green  cheese  for  the  moon. 

Another  of  Mrs.  Siddons's  earlier  dramatists  was  Nicholas 
Rowe,  who,  while  beneath  the  great  how  far,  quite  under- 
stood the  trick  of  the  scene,  the  science  des  planches.  Of  the 
six  inherited  stock  characters  of  Mrs.  Siddons's  first  season, 
Isabella  (Southerne's),  Belvidera,  Monimia,  Zara,  Calista,  and 
Jane  Shore,  a  person  of  to-day  would,  in  all  probability,  choose 
to  see  Rowe's  Jane  Shore.  We  should  know,  beforehand,  some- 
thing about  the  lady.  Glamour  invests  the  name  of  every 
king's  mistress,  world  without  end. 

Rowe's  play,  which  still,  in  1909,  holds  the  stage,  in  the 
provinces,  contains  effective  scenes  and  some  clever  characterisa- 


86  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

tion.  The  only  part  that  lacks  the  smallest  relief  is  '  Glo'ster,' 
and  he  is  such  unadulterated  transpontine  Crookback  that  one 
might  imagine  Rowe  had  never  studied  the  rich  arpeggio  passages 
of  intellectuality  and  irony  whereby  Shakespeare  created  a  man 
in  him. 

Mrs.  Siddons  did  tremendous  things  with  Jane  Shore.  The 
scene  opens  when  the  protagonist  is  no  longer  Edward  v's 
pretty  Jane,  but  poor  Jane,  as  the  epilogue,  with  an  epilogue's 
customary  contemptuousness,  names  her,  of  the  Ricardian  dis- 
pensation. Only  an  original  actress  could  redeem  the  long- 
drawn  whimpering  of  the  part,  as  it  stands  in  the  Works  of 
Rowe.  One  of  its  best  touches — 'a  little  burst  of  genius' — is 
where  Jane  Shore  flames  up  in  a  blessing  upon  Hastings,  who, 
while  he  persecutes  her,  defends  and  protects  the  late  king's 
children.  But  for  this  generous  episode,  Mrs.  Siddons  had  to 
throw  all  the  variety  she  could  into  the  monotonous  part  of 
an  outlawed  Magdalen,  knocking  at  unopening  doors,  ragged 
and  famished,  till,  at  last,  she  was  called  upon  to  assume  the 
pinched  face  and  dead  voice  of  a  human  being,  perishing  from 
hunger  upon  the  cobbles  of  the  streets.  Here,  "  she  excited," 
says  Miss  Wynn,  "  that  deep  thrill  of  horror  which  made  my 
blood  tingle  at  my  fingers'  end."  In  connection  with  the  same 
scene,  another  eye-witness  gives  a  vivid  impression  of  how  Mrs. 
Siddons,  like  every  artist  capable  of  intense  and  self-forgetting 
ideas,  could,  at  times,1  make  a  complete  sacrifice  of  beauty  to 
realism,  i.e.  fidelity  to  nature.  From  the  moment  of  Jane 
Shore's  outlawry,  says  this  anonymous  lady  writer : — 

"  Mrs.  Siddons  ceases  to  excite  pleasure  by  her  appearance. 
I  absolutely  thought  her  the  creature  perishing  through  want, 
'  fainting  from  loss  of  food ' ; — shocked  at  the  sight,  I  could  not 
avoid  turning  from  the  suffering  object;  I  was  disgusted  at  the 
idea,  that  an  event  affecting  our  mortal  frame  only,  should  be 
capable  of  producing  greater  misery  than  the  most  poignant 
anguish  of  the  mind." 

Speaking  of  Mrs.  Siddons's  Calista,  in  The  Fair  Penitent 
(Rowe's  disimprovement  of  Massinger's  The  Fatal  Dowry))  one 
of  her  devotees  said  it  would  be  worth  sitting  out  the  piece  for 
her  scene  with  Horatio,  in  order  to  see  '  such  a  splendid  animal 

1  As,  again,  in  the  part  of  Volurania.     See  Young's  statement,  p.  130. 


SOME  EARLY  PARTS  87 

in  such  a  magnificent  rage.'  This  was  the  part  Miss  Seward 
described  to  Whalley  as  the  most  wonderful  in  Mrs.  Siddons's 
repertory,  because  of  its  'conflicting  and  sublime  variety  of 
passions.'  Certainly,  it  remained  a  safe  card  onwards  from 
the  first  season  to  a  comparatively  late  date.1 

Turning  from  these  comparatively  classic  tragedies  to  some 
more  recently,  and  some  contemporaneously  written,  let  us 
see  what  Mrs.  Siddons  made  of  Murphy's  Grecian  Daughter 
(originally  produced  in  1772)  and  a  few  others  of  less  mark, 
before  examining  the  records  of  her  handling  of  a  celebrated 
part,  Lady  Randolph,  in  Home's  Douglas.  Again  omitting 
the  heroine  of  Hull's  Fatal  Interview,  not  one  of  the 
characters  she  played  during  her  first  season  was  '  created ' 
by  her,  in  the  technical  sense  of  having  owed  to  her  its 
original  impersonation  in  London. 

The  part  of  Euphrasia,  in  The  Grecian  Daughter,  was,  as 
we  have  seen,  familiar  to  her  before  she  came  back  to  London, 
and,  since  she  desired  to  make  her  first  night's  appearance  in 
it,  no  doubt  it  was  the  role  in  which  she  most  'fancied* 
herself.  Murphy's  tragedy  is  founded  on  the  familiar  legend 
of  the  Grecian  daughter,  whose  starving  father  became  her 
nursling,  in  that  (her  baby  having  been  torn  from  her 
breast  by  the  tyrant  who  made  the  old  man  captive)  she  fed 
him  as  she  would  have  fed  the  infant — a  situation  which, 
even  in  description,  would  seem  to  call  for  deft  stage  guidance 
to  steer  it  clear  of  absurdity.  Nevertheless,  though  the  tragedy 
is  unoriginal  in  style  and  unveracious  in  feeling,  it  must  be 
believed  that  it  made,  in  its  time,  a  good  stage  play.  Murphy 
was  a  member  of  Garrick's  Drury  Lane  company,  and,  other 
things  being  equal,  an  actor — take  Shakespeare  or  Moliere  as 
instances ! — produces  better  stage  plays  than  a  merely  literary 
person,  even  be  he  a  Browning  or  a  Tennyson,  owing  to  his 
closer  acquaintance  with  the  stagecraft  side  of  drama. 

"Wild  with  her  grief,  and  terrible  with  wrongs," 

as  she  describes  herself,  Euphrasia  may  well  have  been  too  strut- 
ting an  Amazon,  but  we  have  seen  that  the  part  appealed  to  Mrs. 
Siddons,  as  all  family  sentiment  so  surely  did.  The  character, 

1  I  cannot  find  that  Mrs.  Siddons  acted  Calista  later  than  October  22nd,  1805. 


88  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

in  its  virtuous  energy,  suited  her  heroic  mould,  she  seemed  in 
it  a  Greek  worthy  of  the  Parthenon,  and  the  force  of  her 
acting,  idealising  the  nerveless  stuff  she  had  to  utter,  'en- 
chained '  the  Play-followers  (to  use  a  phrase  of  Foote's)  *  in  a 
silent  rapture  only  fearful  of  its  own  applause.'  It  was 
unfortunate  that  Murphy  should  have  required  her  to  cry, 
after  she  has  stabbed  Dionysius, 

"  Lo !  there  the  wonders  of  Euphrasia's  arm," 

and  we  can  only  suppose  that  the  Play-followers  were  as 
destitute  of  humour  as  the  author  to  let  such  a  line  pass. 

After  a  severe  course  of  imperial  tragedy,  it  was  only 
human  in  the  playgoing  public  to  welcome,  with  a  sigh  of 
relief,  a  drama  of  contemporary  private  life.  On  Novem- 
ber 22nd,  1783,  early  in  her  second  season,  Mrs.  Siddons 
revived  Moore's  The  Gamester,  acting,  on  that  night,  for  the 
first  time  in  London,  with  her  brother,  John,  who  played 
Beverley,  the  part  Garrick  had  created.  Mrs.  Siddons  was 
Mrs.  Beverley,  and  now,  and  for  the  next  twenty-nine  years, 
she  made  the  character  the  most  thrilling  and  real  of  all  her 
wifely  parts,  outside  Shakespeare.  Moore's  play  was  ultra- 
sad,  but  it  contained  a  genuine  idea,  and  the  colloquial 
simplicity  of  its  prose  strengthened  its  effectiveness,  after  so 
many  '  Ye  Gods  ! '  in  the  other  tragedies. 

Mrs.  Siddons's  art,  commented  on  by  all  who  ever  saw 
her  act,  of  heightening  unimaginative  language  till  it  '  rose 
to  touch  the  spheres,'  found  great  scope  in  The  Gamester^  and 
detached  sentences  from  it,  which  seem,  when  read,  bald  and 
unconvincing,  were  lovingly  quoted  by  'old  playgoers,'  as 
having  been  the  peculiar  triumphs  of  her  characterisation  of 
the  fond,  conciliating,  perfect  wife.  All  acting  should  seem 
to  be  improvisation.  Perhaps,  in  an  ideal  state,  the  two 
would  count  as  one  art.  As  Mrs.  Beverley,  Mrs.  Siddons 
seemed  to  be  improvising  every  syllable.  I  am  reminded  of 
how  far  it  is  from  being  the  case  that  the  finest  piece  makes 
the  finest  acting,  when  I  reflect  that  the  moment  many  'old 
playgoers'  would  most  wish  to  crystallise  among  their 
memories  of  Miss  Ellen  Terry's  playing  is  when,  in  W.  G. 
Wills's  skilful,  but,  in  itself,  quite  soulless  adaptation  of  The 


SOME  EARLY  PARTS  89 

Vicar  of   Wake-field,  she,  as  Olivia,  stooped  to  wipe  her  little 
brother's  eyes. 

In  The  Gamester,  the  great  moment,  unassisted,  unfettered 
by  speech,  came  at  the  end,  and,  here,  the  widow's  stare  of 
misery  beside  her  gambler  husband's  corpse  was  likened,  by 
Leigh  Hunt,  to  nothing  less  than  '  the  bewildered  melancholy ' 
of  the  same  actress  in  the  Macbeth  sleep-walking  scene. 
Macready's  Reminiscences  gives  a  detailed  account  of  Mrs. 
Siddons's  Mrs.  Beverley,  for  Macready  had  the  advantage  of 
playing  Beverley  to  her  Mrs.  Beverley,  for  one  night,  at 
Newcastle,  in  1812,  when  her  sun  was  about  to  set,  and  his  to 
rise.  Of  the  last  scene,  he  writes  : — 

"  Her  glaring  eyes  were  fixed  in  stony  blankness  on  his 
[i.e.  Beverley's]  face;  the  powers  of  life  seemed  suspended  in 
her ;  her  sister  and  Lewson  gently  raised  her,  and  slowly  led 
her  unresisting  from  the  body,  her  gaze  never  for  an  instant 
averted  from  it ;  when  they  reached  the  prison  door  she  stopped, 
as  if  awakened  from  a  trance,  with  a  shriek  of  agony  that  would 
have  pierced  the  hardest  heart,  and,  rushing  from  them,1  flung 
herself  as  if  for  union  in  death,  on  the  prostrate  form  before 
her." 

The  perennial  cry, ' Decline  of  the  Drama,'  was  active  during 
the  last  quarter  of  the  eighteenth  century,  et  pour  cause.  '  The 
Siddons '  had  no  Voltaire,  as  La  Clairon  had,  to  write  her  plays, 
and  address  letters  of  criticism  and  encouragement  to  her. 
With  the  possible  exception  of  The  Stranger,  a  play  translated 
from  the  German,  the  novelties  of  her  own  day  did  little  for  her 
fame. 

It  was  inevitable  that  the  literary-minded  friend  should, 
from  the  start,  pester  her  with  his  manuscript  tragedy,  or  with 
a  precursory  letter  to  say  he  had  '  a  tragedy  in  great  forward- 
ness.' Amateur  authors  are  of  two  types,  the  one  resembling 
the  mountain  in  labour,  the  other  as  ludicrously  oblivious  of 
the  fact  that  success  connotes  effort.  It  was  harder  for  the 
pinnacled  actress,  the  sister  of  Drury  Lane's  Manager,  to  return 
what  John  Murray  II,  in  a  letter  to  Byron,  termed  '  a  civil  and 

1  Mrs.  Siddons  always  instructed  an  inexperienced  Jarvis  (the  old  servant)  to  hold 
her  tightly  at  this  point,  on  account  of  her  dramatic  energy  and  great  physical 
strength. 


90  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

delicate  declension '  to  applications  from  persons  of  the  first  type 
than  to  airy  proposals  of  something  in  her  way  written  while 
the  author's  hair  was  dressing. 

Among  personal  acquaintances  we  have  met  already,  who, 
at  one  time  or  another,  aimed  at  the  high  preferment  of  Mrs. 
Siddons's  acceptance  of  their  tragedies,  was  Bertie  Greatheed, 
of  Guy's  Clifife,  Esquire,  Italianate  and  Delia  Cruscan,  the  son 
of  Mrs.  Siddons's  padrona  of  long  ago.  Since  the  emergence  of 
the  Kemble  sister  and  brother,  they  had  revived,  and  strongly 
cemented,  their  relations  with  the  gracious  and  hospitable 
owners  of  the  historic  retreat  beside  the  Avon. 

Bertie  Greatheed 's  accepted  tragedy,  The  Regent,  was 
produced  at  a  date — March  i/th,  1788 — that  made  its  title, 
before  all  things,  '  topical.'  *  Excellent  in  parts,'  the  piece  had 
been  written  expressly  for,  and,  it  was  said,  under  the  presiding 
inspiration  of,  John  Kemble.  At  any  rate,  Kemble  was  the 
Regent,  and  Mrs.  Siddons  was  Dianora,  the  heroine. 

One  of  the  characters,  asked  where  the  king  was,  replied — 

"  Within  his  tent,  surrounded  by  a  friend 
Or  two "  ! 

Gifford  fell  upon  the  play,  in  his  customary  style — horse  and 
foot,  artillery  and  camp-followers — but,  even  without  GifTord,  a 
tragedy  that  contained  several  such  howlers  was  foredoomed. 
It  crawled  through  two  nights,  and  then,  prompted  by  a 
gradually  increasing  buzz  of  inattention  from  boxes,  pit,  and 
galleries,  Mrs.  Siddons  discreetly  retired  from  her  part,  on  the 
plea  of  indisposition.  In  those  days,  no  one  boggled  at  that 
ambiguous  word,  and  the  actress  saved  her  friend,  already 
banqueting  at  the  Brown  Bear,  Bow  Street,  over  a  supposed 
success,  the  dismay  of  finding  that  his  piece  was  being  played 
to  empty  benches.  Her  indisposition,  combining  with  the 
public's,  practically  made  an  end  of  The  Regent,  though  it  was 
announced  as  held  over  till  April  26th,  and  was,  actually,  played, 
in  all,  eight  times.1 

Whalley  was  another  private  friend,  who  'landed'  Mrs. 
Siddons  with  an  impossible  tragedy — the  tragedy  of  a  thorough- 
paced amateur.  Following  fashion's  romantic  wave — ruined 

1  Genest  mistakenly  says  (vi.  477)  it  was  '  acted  but  once ' — April  ist. 


SOME  EARLY  PARTS  91 

turrets  and  broken  bridges  were  the  rage  in  1799 — the  piece 
was  called  The  Castle  of  Montval^  but  its  plot  was  already  cut 
from  under  it  by  '  Monk '  Lewis's  The  Castle  Spectre,  recently 
successfully  produced. 

In  Whalley's  tragedy,  a  castle  contains  one  room  into  which 
the  owner,  a  Bluebeard  II,  forbids  his  bride,  during  his  absence, 
to  penetrate.  Left  alone,  furnished  with  a  bunch  of  keys,  and 
hearing  moans  issuing  from  the  forbidden  chamber,  the  lady, 
accompanied,  as  far  as  the  door,  by  a  devoted  seneschal,  enters 
it.  Within,  she  finds  an  incarcerated,  venerable,  and  unexpected 
father-in-law,  whom  she  greets  with  the  not  unnatural  question, 
"  Are  you  the  ghost? "  In  conclusion, 

"  The  hero  raves,  the  heroine  cries, 
All  stab,  and  everybody  dies." 

Mrs.  Siddons  and  John  and  Charles  Kemble,  the  last- 
named  already  observed  as  a  studious  and  improving  young 
actor,  did  their  utmost  for  Whalley's  tragedy,  but  the  wonder  is 
that  it  lived  eight  nights.  An  exasperating  custom  prevailed 
on  the  part  of  Managers  of  advertising  a  mild  failure,  next  day, 
as  a  success.  It  was  partly  from  this  cause  that  first  night 
damnations  became  so  violent. 

Mrs.  Siddons's  impersonation  of  Lady  Randolph,  in  Douglas^ 
first  undertaken  by  her  on  December  22nd,  1783,  put  the  final 
seal  on  her  reputation.  In  deciding  to  play  this  part  she 
challenged  the,  as  yet,  definitively  unconquered  Mrs.  Crawford, 
whose  chief  estate,  almost  whose  monopoly,  Lady  Randolph 
had  become.  The  direct  contest  was  inevitable,  and  Mrs. 
Siddons  was  well  advised  in  entering  upon  it  when  and  how  she 
did.  On  the  whole,  she  triumphed.  Mrs.  Crawford  had  been  a 
fine,  impassioned  Lady  Randolph,  but,  wherever  the  acting  ot 
the  two  most  differed,  there,  it  was  felt,  Shakespeare's  standard 
and  test  of  dramatic  art,  the  modesty  of  nature,  declared  for 
Mrs.  Siddons. 

Among  the  historic  sentences  of  the  stage,  comparable  with 
Henderson's 

"The  fair  Ophelia!" 

and  Mrs.  Siddons's 

"Lord  cardinal, — 
To  you  I  speak," 


92  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

old  playgoers  counted  Mrs.  Crawford's 

"Was  he  alive?" 

when,  as  Lady  Randolph,  she  listened  to  the  prisoner's  account 
of  the  adventure  to  which  her  lost,  and,  as  yet,  unrecovered,  son 
had  been,  in  infancy,  subjected.  Mrs.  Crawford  shrieked  "  Was 
he  alive  ?  "  on  an  irresistible  maternal  impulse,  and  Bannister  says 
he  once  saw  half  the  pit  start  to  its  feet  at  her  *  heart-gushing ' 
cry.  Mrs.  Siddons  took  the  sentence  in  a  different  key.  She 
remembered  that  Lady  Randolph  was  bound  not  to  reveal  her- 
self as  the  boy's  mother,  and  such  secrecy  had  become  habitual. 
"  Was  he  alive  ?  "  she  murmured,  in  a  half-annihilated  tone,  as 
when  the  heart  stands  still,  and  one  speaks  what  one  feels,  not 
what  one  ought  to  say.  Her  question  was  (to  Home's  credit)  a 
profound  representation  of  instinct,  thinking  aloud,  for  Lady 
Randolph  does  not  seriously  believe  Old  Norval's  assurance — 

"He  was," 

since  she  instantly  hurls  back — 

"Inhuman  that  thou  art! 
How  could'st  thou  kill  what  waves  and  tempests  spared?" 

so  proving  that  the  inquiry  could  not  have  been,  as  Mrs. 
Crawford  interpreted  it,  the  sudden,  rushing  need  to  inform 
herself  of  his  safety.  Furthermore,  Mrs.  Siddons's  faint  articu- 
lation of 

"Was  he  alive?" 

suggested  that  Lady  Randolph's  long  endurance,  its  agony 
intensified  by  the  details  of  her  child's  perils,  just  listened  to 
in  the  shepherd's  story,  was  at  last  at  breaking-point.  Here, 
as  elsewhere,  her  acting  was  truthfully  imagined,  though,  by 
those  who,  still,  held  by  Mrs.  Crawford's,  her  rendition  of  the 
part  was,  naturally,  censured.  Her  '  starts  and  stares '  were 
objected  to,  and  so  was  the  motion  of  her  head,  '  which  seems 
to  dance  upon  elastic  wire,  like  that  of  Punch's  antic  Queen.' 

On  what  principle  did  Mrs.  Siddons  accept  or  reject  dramatic 
parts  ?  She  very  properly  avoided  characters  in  which  there 
was  what  Garrick  called  *  a  lofty  disregard  of  nature,'  but  she 
believed,  as  she  told  the  inquiring  '  Lady  L'  [ucan  ?]  that,  if  a 


SOME  EARLY  PARTS  93 

part  seemed  at  all  within  nature,  something  might  be  made  out 
of  it.  Where  there  was  opportunity  for  genuine  passion,  she 
knew  she  could  grip  the  house,  though  here  something  might 
have  to  be  set  in  stronger  relief  than  the  author  had  indicated, 
and  there,  something  slurred  or  deleted.  A  great  player 
creates,  in  part,  by  selection.  The  degree  of  skill  in  selection — 
which  means  the  envisagement,  the  general  handling  of  the 
part — largely  determines  the  player's  rank  as  an  artist. 

We  picture  Mrs.  Siddons  running  her  eye  down  the  pages 
of  a  new  tragedy,  and,  gradually,  losing  herself  in  the  state  of 
exaltation  actors  induce  at  will,  the  ever-renewed  power  to 
adopt  an  imaginary  personality,  and  relinquish,  for  the  passing 
hour,  their  own.  As  every  writer  on  the  histrionic  temperament 
has  pointed  out  since  Diderot  published  his  '  Paradoxel  the 
player's  art  is  representation,  not  identification,  and,  indeed, 
the  simple  fact  that  nothing  on  the  stage  is  carried  to  a  legiti- 
mate conclusion,  that  the  slain  Hamlet  does  not  really  die,  nor 
the  distraught  Ophelia  drift  across  the  footlights,  proves  that 
the  player  only  plays  the  part.  Since,  broadly  speaking,  his 
effects  depend  on  his  being  (like  ice)  at  the  same  time  melting 
and  cold,  the  first  measure  of  his  greatness  as  an  artist  is  his 
impressibility,  the  second,  his  control  over  it.  Not  only  actors, 
but  painters,  sculptors,  writers,  are  in  a  tale  here.  What 
that  much  misused  phrase,  the  Artistic  Temperament,  rightly 
means  is  the  gift  all  these  people  possess  to  enter  into,  and 
reproduce  feeling  other  than  their  own.  It  is  mental,  in 
contradistinction  to  moral,  sympathy  that  makes  the  artist. 
"  Cest  un  certain  temperament  de  bon  sens  et  de  chaleur  qui 
fait  Pacteur  sublime? 

Yet  the  nobler  and  more  imaginative  the  player,  the  more 
intensely  does  he  recast  his  own  individuality,  and  pour  himself, 
mind  and  body,  into  moulds  not  his.  Brief  though  such  im- 
personations are,  it  is  impossible — in  spite  of  Diderot — not  to 
believe  that,  little  by  little,  they  impair  the  original  tissue,  and 
leave  the  player,  by  dint  of  becoming  many,  something  less 
than  one.  The  slightness  of  the  extent  to  which  this  dis- 
integrative  process  operated  in  the  case  of  Mrs.  Siddons  is  one 
of  the  most  remarkable  facts  about  her  psychological  history. 
She  maintained,  behind  her  many  parts,  a  particularly  definite 


94  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

individuality,  literal  and  unaffluent  it  is  true,  but  grappling 
with  what  hooks  she  had  (as  Johnson  said  of  Baretti)  very 
forcibly.  When,  early  in  her  first  season,  Lord  Carlisle  carried 
her  what  Walpole  calls  '  the  tribute-money '  from  Brooks's, 
he  said  she  was  not  manieree  enough.  Alone  among  actresses, 
she  was  nothing  of  an  actress  off  the  stage. 


VIII 
HER  STARRING  EXPERIENCES 

JOHN  KEMBLE  was  acting,  with  distinguished  applause, 
in  Dublin,  and  mixing  there  in  the  best  society,  through- 
out Mrs.  Siddons's  triumphant  first  winter  in  London.  At 
a  dinner  in  the  apartments  of  Walpole's  friend,  Captain  Jephson, 
the  playwright  equerry,  in  Dublin  Castle,  Lord  Inchiquin 
gave  as  a  toast  '  the  matchless  Siddons,'  and,  drawing  from 
his  finger  a  ring,  containing  her  portrait,  set  in  diamonds,  sent 
it  on  a  salver  to  Mr.  Kemble,  to  desire  his  opinion  of  the 
likeness.  Where  this  was  the  preparative  tone  in  dominant 
circles,  a  starring  visit  was  markedly  '  indicated.' 

Early  in  June,  1783,  Mrs.  Siddons,  accompanied  by  Mr. 
Siddons  as  her  natural  protector ;  William  Brereton  as  a 
'First  Serious'  subsidiary  to  Kemble;  Francis  Aickin,  in- 
valuable in  such  parts  as  needed  to  be  *  manly,  polite,  earnest, 
and  sensible '  ;  and  one  of  her  sisters,  as  her  private  and  stage 
confidante,  crossed  the  Irish  Channel.  It  was  the  first  time 
she  had  set  foot  on  the  sliding  sea.  "  I  never  felt  the  majesty 
of  the  Divine  Creator  so  fully  before.  I  was  dreadfully  sick," 
she  wrote  to  Whalley,  and,  on  the  strength  of  her  single 
experience,  proceeded  to  give  her  friend  '  a  little  wholesor"~ 
advice'  against  a  similar  capitulation.  "  A 11  ways  (you  see 
I  have  forgot  to  spell)  go  to  bed  the  instant  you  go  on  board, 
for  by  lying  horizontally,  and  keeping  very  quiet,  you  cheat 
the  sea  of  half  its  influence." 

Her  sufferings  were  not  ended  on  her  reaching  the  Dublin 
landing-stage,  on  June  i6th.  The  party  arrived,  after  a  stormy 
passage,  at  12.30  a.m.  The  rain  was  streaming  down,  and, 
instead  of  being  driven  to  a  comfortable  inn,  Mrs.  Siddons 
and  Miss  Kemble,  after  spending  an  hour  and  a  half  in  the 

95 


96  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

'  dungeon '  of  a  Custom  house,  had  to  walk  about  the  wet 
streets,  looking  for  a  shelter  that,  at  two  in  the  morning,  seemed 
momentarily  more  unlikely.  At  last,  they  were  taken  in  at 
the  house  where  Brereton's  father,  Major  Brereton,  a  Dublin 
resident,  had  secured  his  son  a  bed,  the  landlady  repeatedly 
protesting  that  it  was  contrary  to  her  rule  to  entertain  ladies. 

Naturally,  Mrs.  Siddons's  first  impression  of  the  Irish 
capital  was  unfavourable.  She  roundly  called  it  'a  sink  of 
filthiness.'  And  her  unfavourable  impression  did  not,  altogether, 
wear  off  as  time  went  on.  She  took  against  the  people. 
"They  are  all  ostentation  and  insincerity,  and  in  their  ideas 
of  finery  very  like  the  French,  but  not  so  cleanly.  They  are 
tenacious  of  their  country  to  a  degree  of  folly  that  is  very 
laughable."  Thus  she  wrote,  for  transmission  abroad,  on 
July  I4th.  As  it  chanced,  she  omitted  to  prepay  the  postage 
on  these  treasonable  opinions,  and  the  letter  was  officially 
opened  in  Ireland. 

In  pursuance  of  his  custom  of  paying  an  annual  visit  to 
London  to  recruit  his  company,  Daly,  then  Manager  of  the 
Smock  Alley  Theatre,  had  personally  been  over  to  clinch 
an  engagement  with  Mrs.  Siddons.  Most  probably,  he  went 
during  '  the  Passion  Week,'  when  all  the  Managers  who 
wanted  people,  and  all  the  actors  who  wanted  employment, 
habitually  assembled  in  London. 

Once  more,  Mrs.  Siddons  led  off  with  Southerne's  Isabella. 
This  was  on  June  21st.1  Seats  were  at  fancy  prices.  In 
a  'humourous  Account'  of  her  reception  (published  after  the 
second  night)  included  in  the  miscellany  entitled  Edwin's 
Pills  to  Purge  Melancholy,  among  a  number  of  less  apposite 
epithets,  she  is  termed  "  this  Moon  of  blank  verse !  this  Queen 
and  Princess  of  tears !  this  World  of  weeping  clouds !  this 
Juno  of  commanding  aspect !  this  Proserpine  of  fire  and  earth- 
quake!" The  tone  is  intentionally  insolent.  In  all  probability, 
Peter  Seguin,  the  author  (who  manifests  more  than  the  average 
Irishman's  lack  of  humour)  was  a  partisan  of  Mrs.  Crawford. 

A  note  to  the  pasquinade  states  that,  when  it  first 
appeared,  'The  lady's  friends  were  outrageous  against  the 
author,'  who  long  'kept  himself  snug,'  and  let  others  have 

1  Boaden  says,  June  2Oth. 


HER  STARRING  EXPERIENCES  97 

the  discredit  of  it.  Though  it  was,  no  doubt,  in  effect, 
libellous  to  describe  a  few  hisses  on  the  second  night  as 
authoritative,  it  yet  seems  clear  that  Mrs.  Siddons  did  not, 
at  once,  become  Dublin's  universal  idol.  In  every  theatre 
outside  London,  the  starring  player,  the  'exotic/  has  to  run 
the  gauntlet  of  a  natural  cavil  against  London's  verdict  of 
merit.  It  must  be  acknowledged  that,  in  spite  of  her 
magnetism  of  sheer  power,  Mrs.  Siddons  lacked  the  quality 
better  fitted  to  win  the  Irish  vote — bonhomie.  The  rougher 
element  in  an  Irish  audience  loved  to  put  itself  in  personal 
relations  with  the  actors  on  the  boards.  Lady  Morgan's 
(and  Macready's)  story  of  the  man  who,  in  the  friendliest 
spirit,  stage-whispered  to  Laurence  Clinch,  as  Lothario,  from 
the  gallery,  "Larry,  honey,  there's  the  laste  taste  in  life  of 
yer  shirt  got  out  behind  you,"  symbolises  much.  At  Cork, 
the  galleries  tried  a  little  familiarity  with  Mrs.  Siddons. 
"  Sally,  me  jewel,  how  are  you  ? "  sang  out  some  one.  But 
Mrs.  Siddons,  like  the  lady  in  the  grammatical  example  of 
the  force  of  the  comma,  walked  on  her  head  a  little  higher 
than  usual. 

The  fresh  actress  had  to  conquer  the  disadvantage  of 
being  English,  before  an  audience  accustomed  to  applaud 
first-rate  performers  who  were  also  Irish.  Practically  all  the 
best  later  eighteenth  century  players,  with  the  exception  of 
the  two  greatest,  were  of  Hibernian  extraction.  It  was  not 
easy  for  the  newcomer  to  displace  Mrs.  Crawford  (who,  just 
before,  had  been  acting  at  the  selfsame  theatre)  in  her  ancient 
stronghold,  whence,  in  1803,  two  years  after  she  died,  the 
last  attempt  to  prove  her  superiority  emanated — in  *  Funereal 
Stanzas,'  strongly  dwelling  on  her  'nature's  genuine  glow,' 
in  contradistinction  to  Mrs.  Siddons's  '  mock-gems,  produc'd 
from  stone' 

Mrs.  Siddons's  season  terminated,  says  Charles  Lee  Lewes 
(the  grandfather  of  George  Eliot's  Lewes)  on  the  twelfth  night, 
or  thereabouts.  She  then  went  on  to  Cork,  accompanied 
by  her  brother,  John.  His  three  years'  engagement  at  Drury 
Lane  was  just  signed.  , 

Within  about  ten  weeks,  Mrs.   Siddons   made   ;£iooo  out 
of  Irish   admiration   of  her   art,  so  that,  in   spite   of  P.  little 
7 


98  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

journalistic  malice,  probably  due  to  pro-Crawford  prejudice, 
at  the  outset,  she  very  sensibly  thought  her  first  visit  to 
Ireland  a  success,  and  arranged  to  go  there  again  for  a 
longer  period  the  following  year. 

From  1783  onwards  until  1805,  she  paid  sjx  visits  to  Dublin. 
A  pseudonymous  booklet,  entitled  The  Beauties  of  Mrs. 
Siddons,  gives,  in  the  form  of  letters,  one  dealing  with  each 
rdle,  a  warmly  laudatory  account  of  her  Dublin  appearances 
during  1785,  when  she  went  through  a  repertory  of  six 
characters,  Belvidera,  Zara,  Isabella,  Margaret  of  Anjou,  Jane 
Shore,  and  Lady  Randolph.  From  chance  records  we  gather 
that  she  woke  more  general  Irish  enthusiasm  away  from 
Dublin.  She  was  described,  by  Francis  Twiss,  as  finishing 
her  engagement  in  Belfast  in  1785,  'with  most  uncommon 
eclat!  Every  night  the  whole  of  the  pit  had  been  turned  into 
boxes — not  a  single  hat  visible. 

In  the  world  of  society,  Mrs.  Siddons  met  with  unqualified 
success  in  a  country  where  it  had  long  been  the  right  thing 
to  pet  players.  Her  Manager,  Richard  Daly,  of  Castle  Daly, 
patentee  of  the  Theatre  Royal,  Dublin,  though  no  gentleman 
where  pretty  and  poor  young  actresses  were  concerned, 
enjoyed  the  reputation  of  paying  his  company  to  a  shilling; 
he  was  a  man  of  family,  and,  but  for  a  squint,  very  good- 
looking;  on  general  grounds  he  appeared  justifiably  at  his 
ease  on  the  Mall  in  Sackville  Street,  where  fashion  congregated. 
He  was  well  able  to  make  the  star  and  her  husband  acquainted 
with  the  right  people. 

Mrs.  Siddons  had  a  still  better  introduction  from  another 
source.  The  lady,  who,  as  the  Hon.  Henrietta  Boyle,  with 
her  stepfather,  then  Lord  Bruce,  had  discovered  the  young 
actress  at  Cheltenham,  and  become  gushingly  intimate  with  her, 
now  reappeared  as  the  wife  of  John  O'Neill,  of  Shanes  Castle, 
on  the  Antrim  shore  of  Lough  Neagh,  and  to  that  historic 
house — destroyed  in  its  then  form  (and  including  the  private 
theatre  Mr.  O'Neill  built)  by  fire,  not  long  afterwards — Mrs. 
Siddons  was  cordially  bidden  on  her  second  visit  to  Ireland, 
in  1784.  Her  record  of  her  stay  there  is  worth  transcribing. 

"The  luxury  of  this  establishment,"  she  wrote,  "almost 
inspired  the  recollection  of  an  Arabian  night's  entertainment. 


HER  STARRING  EXPERIENCES  99 

Six  or  eight  carriages,  with  a  numerous  throng  of  lords  and 
ladies  on  horseback,  began  the  day  by  making  excursions 
over  this  terrestrial  paradise,  returning  home  just  in  time  to 
dress  for  dinner.  The  table  was  served  with  a  profusion  and 
elegance  to  which  I  have  not  seen  anything  comparable. 
The  sideboards  were  decorated  with  adequate  magnificence, 
on  which  appeared  several  immense  silver  flagons  containing 
claret.  A  fine  band  of  musicians  played  during  the  whole 
of  the  repast ;  they  were  stationed  in  the  corridors,  which  led 
to  a  fine  conservatory,  where  we  plucked  our  dessert,  from 
numerous  trees,  of  the  most  exquisite  fruits." 

N.  P.  Willis,  after  a  severe  course  of  patrician  claret  and 
1  fruits,'  could  not  *  pencil '  more  lusciously ;  Thackeray, 
burlesquing  Coningsby,  could  scarcely  outdo  the  silver  flagons 
appearing  on  adequate  magnificence.  Since  her  term  at 
Guy's  Cliffe,  Mike — but,'  as  far  as  her  own  prestige  was  con- 
cerned, '  oh,  how  different,'  nothing  to  equal  Shanes  Castle  in 
the  way  of  an  interior,  had  come  into  her  experience,  for 
Langford  Court,  the  Whalleys'  place,  was  not,  of  course, 
maintained  in  the  style  of  a  great  country  house. 

In  the  O'Neills'  party,  Mrs.  Siddons  met  and  became 
interested  (as  who  was  not?)  in  one  of  the  tragic  Romantics 
of  Irish  history,  one  who  was  a  traitor,  or  a  martyr,  or  a 
divine  fool,  according  to  the  point  of  view.  "Poor  Lord 
Edward  Fitzgerald,  the  most  amiable,  honourable,  though 
misguided  youth  I  ever  knew,"  commented  Mrs.  Siddons. 

During  the  latter  part  of  her  second  summer's  Irish 
engagement,  she  stayed  with  Lord  Edward's  mother, 
the  re-married  Dowager  Duchess  of  Leinster,  and  enjoyed 
the  glory  of  driving  in  from  Frescati,  Black  Rock,  to  Dublin 
for  rehearsals.  No  wonder  that  the  greenroom  monster, 
jealousy,  gnashed  his  teeth. 

After  his  classic  interview  with  her  at  his  house  in  Bolt 
Court,  Fleet  Street,  Dr.  Johnson  decided  that  the  Mrs.  Siddons 
of  1783  was  unspoilt  by  the  two  powerful  corrupters  of  man- 
kind, praise  and  money.  The  discernment  of  the  'venerable 
Luminary '  was  better  evinced  in  his  general  postulate  than  in 
his  particular  exception.  It  was  shortly  after  her  first  visit 
to  Ireland  that  rumours  began  to  be  heard  of  some  slight 


ioo  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

scath  from  '  praise/  and  a  certain  impairment  from  '  money.' 
One  fancies  that  the  Grand  Old  Sentimentalist  spoke  while 
still  under  the  soft  memory  of  the  lady's  beauty,  and  his  own 
felicity  of  compliment,  when,  apologising  for  Frank  Barber's 
momentary  inability  to  offer  her  a  chair  unencumbered  by 
books,  he  said,  "  Madam,  you  who  so  often  occasion  a  want 
of  seats  to  other  people,  will  the  more  easily  excuse  the 
want  of  one  yourself." 

It  is  told  that  our  heroine  was  so  inebriated  with  the  incense 
burnt  by  Irish  great  ladies  and  the  Lord  Lieutenant  (who  was 
an  English  Duke)  that  she  grew  more  than  a  little  uppish 
towards  any  humbler  people  who  ventured  to  approach  with 
their  small  joss-sticks.  One  conte,  palpably  founded  on  a 
general  impression,  describes  her  stonily  refusing  sittings  to 
Robert  Home,  then  a  Dublin  portrait  painter,  on  the  plea  that 
she  hardly  had  time  to  sit  to  Reynolds,  and  then  proceeding  to 
box  the  man's  ears  (this  detail  is  not  ben  trovatd)  because  he 
riposted  by  saying  he  should  be  able  to  live  without  painting 
her.  Another  story  describes  poor  *  Sid '  telling  the  wife  of  a 
merchant  who  was  entertaining  him  and  Kemble  at  dinner,  that, 
though  he  should  like  to  further  her  wish  to  be  introduced  to 
Mrs.  Siddons,  he  did  '  not  know  how  to  break  such  a  matter  to 
her.'  "  This  anecdote,"  artlessly  adds  the  '  Theatrical  Portrait ' 
in  the  European  Magazine,  September,  1783,  whence  I  glean  it, 
"  is  not  fabricated." 

Owing,  partly,  to  her  rapid  success  and  fashionable  following, 
partly  to  her  uncomplaisant  character,  Mrs.  Siddons  had,  at  this 
time,  a  considerable  number  of  theatrical  enemies,  hissing 
detraction.  "  I  have  paid  severely  for  my  eminence,"  she  said. 
The  public  need  never  have  known  much  that  was  mis- 
representation, and  something,  too,  that,  in  her  own  behaviour, 
was  regrettable,  had  it  not  been  that  hers  was  peculiarly  a  period 
in  which  newspaper  editors  went  avidly  scavenging  for  material 
suggested  by  malice.  The  most  rancorous  things  ever  printed 
concerning  Mrs.  Siddons  are  to  be  found  in  the  theatrical 
paragraphs  of  the  European  Magazine. 

She  herself  attributed  the  cloud  of  unpopularity  that,  more 
or  less,  hung  over  her  during  the  latter  half  of  1784  to  her 
Irish  Manager,  Daly,  in  the  first  instance.  Daly  was 


HER  STARRING  EXPERIENCES  101 

admittedly,  an  inordinately  vain  man,  and,  in  her  Memoranda, 
bequeathed  to  Campbell,  she  says  he  could  not  forgive  her  for 
preventing  him,  in  King  John ,  from  standing,  as  Faulconbridge, 
in  the  centre  of  the  stage,  during  her  '  best  scene,'  as  Constance. 
In  revenge,  she  states,  he  rilled  the  Dublin  press  with  railings  at 
her  well-known  thrift,  which  his  paragraphists  called  avarice. 
Gradually,  these  railings,  stiffened  out  by  modern  instances  of 
her  meanness,  *  found  their  way '  into  the  London  papers.  So 
she  accounted  for  the  hostile  demonstration  which,  as  we  shall 
see,  greeted  her  on  the  opening  night  of  her  1784-85  season  at 
Drury  Lane. 

Since  the  causes  of  the  passing  and  partial  wave  of  odium 
that  now  overtook  her  were,  in  a  special  sense,  personal,  it  is 
necessary  to  our  study  of  her  psychological  life  to 

"Let  this  old  woe  step  on  the  stage  again." 

The  trouble  was  connected  with  two  actors :  Brereton,  who, 
in  1784,  again  accompanied  her  to  Ireland,  and  Digges,  whom 
she  found  there.  Brereton  was  a  mediocre  tragedian,  or,  at 
least,  had  only  appeared  mediocre  till,  during  the  winter  of 
1782-83,  he  was  called  upon  to  play  Jaffier  to  her  Belvidera, 
at  Drury  Lane,  and  (in  the  language  of  the  day)  *  derived  a  new 
soul  from  the  collision/  at  any  rate,  played,  especially  in  the 
ardent  third  act,  better  than  he  had  ever  played  before. 
Every  one  said  that  he,  a  married  man,  had  fallen  in  hopeless 
love  with  Mrs.  Siddons.  Very  possibly,  it  was  so.  The 
excellent  Mrs.  Siddons  was  the  last  person  to  be  attendrie  by 
any  Mr.  Brereton's  susceptibility. 

In  the  summer  of  1784,  at  her  desire,  Brereton  was  re- 
engaged for  Ireland,  without  salary,  but  on  the  understanding 
that  his  emolument  was  to  be  a  benefit  free  of  charges,  with 
Mrs.  Siddons  acting  in  it.  In  the  middle  of  the  engagement, 
he  fell  ill,  was  "  given  over  by  his  physicians,"  and  could  not 
play  for  her  benefit.  When  he  recovered,  and  talked  of  his, 
she  refused  to  play  for  him  entirely  gratis,  because  he  had 
not  played  for  her.  £50  per  night  for  twenty  consecutive  nights 
was  her  pay  from  Daly,  but  at  the  various  benefits  she  accepted 
£30.  For  Brereton,  she  now  proposed  to  play  for  £20.  Finally, 
partly  in  consequence  of  illness  on  her  part,  which  sliced 


102  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

almost  a  fortnight  off  the  benefit  end  of  her  season,  his 
benefit  never  took  place.  Since  his  mental  health  was  already 
quivering — while  in  Dublin  he  attempted  suicide;  in  1785, 
became  stark  mad;  and,  in  1787,  died  in  Hoxton  Asylum — 
he,  most  likely,  expressed  over  vehemently  to  his  friends  his 
disappointment  about  his  benefit,  and  his  friends,  in  all 
probability,  retailed  his  indignation  rather  than  the  exact  facts 
of  his  injury,  whereby  the  statement  got  about  that  Mrs. 
Siddons  had  refused,  on  any  consideration,  to  act  for  him. 
What  a  newspaper  correspondent  (supposed  to  be  Kemble) 
who  wrote  over  the  signature  of  '  Laertes/  urged  in  defence  of 
her  apparent  hardness  merits  consideration — 

"  Mr.  Brereton  and  his  wife  have  an  ample  salary  at  Drury 
Lane  Theatre.  They  cannot  receive  less  than  five  hundred 
pounds  per  annum.  Mrs.  Siddons  performed  for  the  benefit 
of  Mr.  Brereton  only  a  few  months  before,  by  which  he  must 
have  cleared  nearly  two  hundred  pounds.  Could  he  be,  there- 
fore, an  object  of  such  necessity  as  to  require  a  gratis 
performance  ?  " 

At  about  the  same  date  (July,  1784),  unfortunately  for  Mrs. 
Siddons,  old  West  Digges,  whose  life  had  been  none  too 
reputable  and  none  too  prosperous,  fell  down,  paralysed, 
whilst  rehearsing  with  her  in  Dublin.  As  to  what  she  did, 
or  did  not  do,  on  this  occasion,  to  assist  a  broken  brother-actor, 
accounts  materially  vary.  "  It  occurred  to  me  that  I  might 
be  of  some  use  to  him,  if  I  could  persuade  the  Manager  to 
give  him  a  night  at  the  close  of  my  engagement.  I  proposed 
my  request  to  the  Manager,"  is  what  she  says.  Her  ill-wishers 
and  the  irresponsible  accused  her  of  first  refusing  to  act,  and, 
later,  of  demanding  £50  if  she  acted,  with  an  understanding 
that  the  fact  of  the  fee  was  to  be  kept  secret.  Here,  calumny 
stood  confessed,  for  it  was  preposterous  to  allege  she  had 
asked  Digges  £20  more  than  she  would  have  asked  any 
actor  in  possession  of  a  salary  and  good  prospects. 

In  the  following  memoranda  of  Mrs.  Siddons's  own,  we  do 
not,  I  fear,  catch  a  vision  of  Our  Lady  of  Bounties,  joyous  in 
bestowal,  and  making  little  of  her  act  of  grace — 

"  By  indefatigable  labour,  and  in  spite  of  cruel  annoyances, 
Mr.  Siddons  and  myself  got  together,  from  all  the  little  country 


HER  STARRING  EXPERIENCES  103 

theatres,  as  many  as  would  enable  us  to  attempt  'Venice 
Preserved.'  Oh!  to  be  sure  it  was  a  scene  of  disgust  and 
confusion.  I  acted  Belvidera,  without  having  ever  previously 
seen  the  face  of  one  of  the  actors.  Poor  Mr.  Digges  was  most 
materially  benefited  by  this  most  ludicrous  performance;  and 
I  put  my  disgust  into  my  pocket,  since  money  passed  into 
his." 

What  had  never  been  cordially  conceded  was  .grudgingly 
carried  out,  but,  certainly,  under  adverse  conditions.  These, 
however,  Mrs.  Siddons  appears  to  have  brought  upon  herself 
by  her  delayed  second  thoughts,  for  when  Digges's  '  messenger,' 
who  was,  seemingly,  Daly,  originally  applied  to  her,  it  is 
inconceivable  that  he  proposed  to  have  the  benefit  held  over 
till  after  the  company  had  moved  to  Limerick. 

Unhappily,  Mrs.  Siddons  had  by  no  means  heard  the  last 
of  the  charmless  name  of  'poor  Mr.  Digges.'  When  she 
returned  to  London,  she  found  that  evil  report  had  been  busy, 
and,  by  September  3Oth,  felt  it  necessary  to  put  forth,  in  Mr. 
Siddons's  name,  a  newspaper  letter,  denying  the  truth  of  the 
accusations  levelled  at  her,  while  laying  the  burden  of  actual 
disproof  on  Brereton,  who,  also,  was  in  London,  and  on 
Digges.  Three  days  later,  Mr.  Siddons  was  able  to  publish 
the  following  letter,  addressed — in  no  very  large-hearted  style — 
to  himself,  from  Brereton  : — 

"  SIR, — I  am  concerned  to  find  Mrs.  Siddons  has  suffered 
in  the  public  opinion  on  my  account.  I  have  told  you  before, 
and  I  again  repeat  it,  that  to  the  friends  I  have  seen  I  have 
taken  pains  to  exculpate  her  from  the  least  unkindness  to  me 
in  Dublin.  I  acknowledge  she  did  agree  to  perform  at  my 
benefit  for  a  less  sum  than  for  any  other  performer,  but  her 
illness  prevented  it ;  and  that  she  would  have  played  for  me 
after  that  had  not  the  night  been  appointed  after  she  had 
played  three  times  in  the  same  week — and  that  the  week  after 
her  illness — and  I  am  very  willing  you  shall  publish  this  letter, 
if  you  think  it  will  be  of  the  least  service  to  Mrs.  Siddons,  to 
whom  I  am  proud  to  own  many  obligations  of  friendship. 
I  am,  Sir,  your  very  humble  servant, 

"  W.  BRERETON  " 

This   letter  made   the   newspapers  very  active  and  foolish. 


104  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

What  follows — from  the  General  Advertiser,  October  7th,  is  a 
specimen  of  the  sort  of  thing  editors  printed  then : — 

"QUERE,  TO  MR.  BRERETON 

"  Did  you  or  did  Mr.  Siddons  write  the  letter  signed 
W.  Breretont  Answer  this  as  you  value  your  HONOUR;  for 
much  depends  upon  it.  The  public  say  Mr.  Siddons  wrote, 
and  that  you  scratched,  and  then  signed. — THEATRICUS." 

Perhaps  Kemble  or  some  other  one  of  Mrs.  Siddons's 
champions  represented  to  Brereton  that  his  letter  read  un- 
commonly cold.  By  October  5th  he  had  been  induced  to 
address  'The  Printer  of  the  Public  Advertiser*  in  another, 
equally  fishlike.  "  Why,"  inquires  '  Laertes,'  censuring  what 
he  calls  Brereton's  "  unexplicit  first  card  "  and  "  last  summary 
card,"  "  did  he  not  gratefully  step  forward  by  a  circumstantial 
letter,  as  he  was  repeatedly  called  upon,  previously  to  Mrs. 
Siddons's  arrival  ?  .  .  .  [His]  expressions  seemed  extorted  and 
inconclusive.  The  tongues  of  slander,  in  broken  sentences, 
discovered  mercenary  motives  only  in  their  explication  of  less 
sum,  though  attempted  to  be  veiled,  they  said,  by  Mr.  Brereton's 
delicacy.  Whereas  the  transaction  was  veiled  only  by  his 
obscure  brevity." 

Tom  King,  Mrs.  Siddons's  loyal  friend,  introduced  a 
tentative  and  understood  reference  to  'living  worth,'  in  the 
prologue  with  which,  on  September  3Oth,  he  opened  the  Drury 
Lane  season,  but  the  line  was  ill  received  by  a  portion  of  the 
audience.  It  must  be  conjectured  that  when  Mrs.  Siddons 
drove  down  from  her  newly  leased  house  in  Gower  Street,1  to 
the  theatre,  for  her  first  performance,  on  October  5th  (at  '  Half 
after  Six,'  The  Gamester,  Mrs.  Beverley,  Mrs.  Siddons)  she  was 
apprehensive  of  unpleasantness. 

It  came,  as  soon  as  she  appeared,  in  the  form  of  hisses  2  and 
a  cry  of  'Off!  Off!'  She  waited;  the  clamour  grew  louder. 

1  " .  .  .  the  back  of  it  is  most  effectually  in  the  country,  and  delightfully  pleasant"- 
Mrs.  Siddons  to  Whalley.    Whalley,  i.  425.    I  am  indebted  to  Mr.  A.  R.  6.  Stutfield, 
of  the  Bedford  Office,  for  the  facts  that  No.   14  (now  28)  was  the  number  of  the 
house,  and  that  William   Siddons  agreed  to    become  assignee   of  the  lease   from 
1 786  until  1814. 

2  The  Morning  Chronicle,  October  6th,  said  that  an  eighth  of  the  audience  hissed. 


HER  STARRING  EXPERIENCES  105 

Two  or  three  times  she  tried  to  speak,  but  vainly.  At  length — 
I  quote  from  her  own  account,  in  the  Campbell  Memoranda,  of 
this  ordeal  of  an  evening — 

"  A  gentleman  stood  forth  in  the  front  of  the  pit,  .  .  .  who 
accosted  me  in  these  words :  '  For  heaven's  sake,  madam,  do 
not  degrade  yourself  by  an  apology,  for  there  is  nothing 
necessary  to  be  said/  I  shall  always  look  back  with  gratitude 
to  this  gallant  man's  solitary  advocacy  of  my  cause :  like  '  Abdiel, 
faithful  found ;  among  the  faithless,  faithful  only  he!  His 
admonition  was  followed  by  reiterated  clamour,  when  my  dear 
brother  appeared,  and  carried  me  away  from  this  scene  of 
insult.  The  instant  I  quitted  it,  I  fainted  in  his  arms ;  and, 
on  my  recovery,  I  was  thankful  that  my  persecutors  had  not 
the  gratification  of  beholding  this  weakness.  After  I  was 
tolerably  restored  to  myself,  I  was  induced,  by  the  persuasions 
of  my  husband,  my  brother,  and  Mr.  Sheridan,  to  present  my- 
self again  before  that  audience  by  whom  I  had  been  so  savagely 
treated,  and  before  whom,  but  in  consideration  of  my  children, 
I  would  have  never  appeared  again." 

Encouraged,  no  doubt,  by  the  friendlier  voices  that  had 
been  calling  her  back,  Mrs.  Siddons  came  on  alone,  advanced 
to  the  centre  of  the  footlights,  and,  gazing  into  the  cavern  full 
of  eyes  that  fronted  her,  thus  addressed  the  house : — 

"  Ladies  and  Gentlemen, — The  kind  and  flattering  partiality 
which  I  have  uniformly  experienced  in  this  place  would  make 
the  present  interruption  distressing  to  me  indeed,  were  I  in  the 
slightest  degree  conscious  of  having  deserved  your  censure. 
I  feel  no  such  consciousness.  The  stories  which  have  been 
circulated  against  me  are  calumnies.  When  they  shall  be 
proved  to  be  true  my  aspersers  will  be  justified ;  but,  till  then, 
my  respect  for  the  public  leads  me  to  be  confident  that  I  shall 
be  protected  from  unmerited  insult." 

It  was  a  dignified  denial,  and  its  speaker's  steadiness  under 
fire  created  a  revulsion  of  feeling.  King  came  forward  to 
entreat  a  few  minutes  for  her  to  recover  from  what  the  Public 
Advertiser  termed  *  her  flurry,'  and,  when  the  curtain  presently 
rose  on  Mrs.  Beverley,  the  house  was  hushed.  "  Mrs.  Siddons, 
on  Tuesday  evening,"  said  the  Morning  Chronicle,  "in  a  new 
and  irksome  situation  indeed,  displayed  the  most  sincere 


io6  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

innocence,  even  by  the  peculiarity  of  her  fortitude."     It   was 
her  lifelong  gift  to  shine  brightest  in  adversity. 

Up  to  October  22nd,  in  consequence  of  adverse  winds 
delaying  the  Irish  mails,  Digges's  solicited  testimonial  was  still 
to  seek.  It  then  appeared,  in  the  Morning  Chronicle,  as 
follows : — 

"  SIR, — I  empower  you  to  declare  to  the  publick,  that  I  did 
not  pay  Mrs.  Siddons  for  playing  for  my  benefit.  I  thanked  the 
lady  by  letter  for  her  politeness,  which  I  am  informed  she  has 
mislaid.  I  think  it  is  but  justice  to  inform  you  of  this. 

"WEST   DlGGES 

"To  Mr.  Woodfall" 

This  was  even  worse  —  certainly,  more  churlish  —  than 
Brereton's  reserved  exculpations.  As  regarded  the  unkindest 
cut  in  each  allegation  as  to  '  benefits  forgot/  Mrs.  Siddons  had, 
clearly,  been  slandered  ;  yet  it  was  no  great  wonder  that,  in  the 
face  of  such  evidence  to  this  as  Brereton  and  Digges's  letters, 
the  average  man  caught  up  and  conserved  an  eidolon  he  could 
name  stingy  Siddons,  the  Lady  Sarah  Save-All.  When  a 
public  that  lives  on  catchwords  gets  hold  of  catchwords  as 
well  adapted  to  its  comprehension  as  these,  it  does  not  readily 
drop  them,  and  so  Mrs.  Siddons,  like  Garrick  before  her,  was, 
throughout  her  life,  found  guilty,  by  the  gallery  verdict,  of  an 
undue  love  of  money.  The  average  man  resents  thrift  in  a 
class  he  has  been  brought  up  to  summarise,  on  the  financial 
side,  as  light  come,  light  go.  It  upsets  his  labels.  Secretly, 
he  would  prefer  to  hold  the  nose  of  every  'bohemian,'  to  a 
grindstone,  engraved,  at  first,  '  open-handedness/  and,  later, 
1  improvidence.' 

'  Laertes '  may  have  been  a  special  pleader,  but  he  talked 
sense  when  he  asked,  "If  a  lady,  perhaps,  be  prudent  in 
making  a  future  provision  for  herself  and  family — a  theatrical 
phenomenon  indeed ! — must  she  sacrifice  that  prudence  at 
the  shrine  of  the  imprudence  of  others  ?  "  It  is  almost  needless 
to  say  that  those  members  of  Mrs.  Siddons's  own  profession 
who  were  not  addicted  to  'muddling  away  money  on  trades- 
men's bills '  enthusiastically  joined  the  hue  and  cry  against  her. 
They  could  not  deny  the  statement  made  by  Lee  Lewes  that, 


HER  STARRING  EXPERIENCES  107 

at  Cork,  in  1783,  she  gave  two  benefits  for  charities,  in  addition 
to  her  gratis  performances  at  Aickin's  benefit  and  at  Lewes's 
own.  But  they  could  make  vague,  oblique  accusations — 
that  she  'would  as  soon  part  with  her  eye  teeth  as  with  a 
guinea/  that  she  was  the  one  parsimonious  person  at  green- 
room collections  for  indigent  actors,  that  at  St  Martin's 
Church,  while  the  organ  was  playing  out  the  congregation 
on  a  hospital  Sunday,  she  lingered  behind  to  evade  the  plate. 
Mrs.  Abington's  generosity  to  all  fellow  -  players  at  their 
benefits  was  bepraised.  It  might  have  been  retorted 
that  Mrs.  Siddons  was  an  actress  who  had  no  sources  of 
income  less  honourable  than  her  art.  In  the  Public 
Advertiser r,  for  February  3rd,  1785,  appeared  a  letter  (attri- 
buted to  'Shakespeare'  Steevens)  in  which  Mrs.  Siddons's 
'rapture'  of  hospitality  in  the  Macbeth  banquet  scene  was 
sarcastically  contrasted  with  her  abstention  from  hospitality 
in  Gower  Street. 

Not  only  journalists,  but  pamphleteers  also,  enormously 
worked  up  any  depreciatory  gossip  of  the  coulisses.  As  late 
as  1786,  for  example,  a  tract  appeared,  entitled  The  Green- 
Room  Mirror,  with  an  article — the  last  of  many  on  various 
players — on  Mrs.  Siddons,  bearing,  for  motto,  Rosalind's 

"  Who  might  be  your  mother, 
That  you  insult,  exult,  and  all  at  once, 
Over  the  wretchedl"  etc.  etc. 

after  which,  the  mouther  proceeded  to  talk  about  "Adversity 
metamorphosed  into  Affluence,  riding  in  the  chariot  of  Plenty^ 
hurling  that  identical  Charity  by  which  she  was  rendered  an 
object  of  notice  and  independence,  from  the  throne  of  pity  to  the 
eternal  seat  of  despair  "  ! 

However  much  we  may  be  admirers  of  Mrs.  Siddons,  it  is 
impossible  to  consider  that  she  came,  in  reality,  altogether 
well  out  of  either  the  Brereton  or  the  Digges  affair.  Some- 
thing may  be  allowed  for  misunderstanding,  something  for 
the  malicious  report  of  the  envious,  yet,  taken  all  round,  the 
evidence  obliges  us  to  see  that  she  was,  at  best,  only  kind, 
in  the  Digges  case,  on  an  arriere  pensee.  It  must  frankly 
be  stated  that  she  never  felt  any  spontaneous  prompting  to 


io8  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

take  the  children's — her  children's — bread,  and  cast  it  to 
dogs  of  actors.  The  generosity  towards  brother-players  in 
distress  which  is  so  winning  a  characteristic  of  the  majority 
of  successful  players  she  did  not  possess.  She  had  less  esprit 
de  corps  even  than  the  majority  of  wedded  women.  Her  sense 
of  responsibility  was  limited  to  the  wants  of  her  own  nestlings. 
It  was  in  keeping  that,  at  a  much  later  date  (1815),  she  refused 
to  play,  except  '  on  her  brother's  terms '— Le.  half  the  receipts 
and  a  clear  benefit — for  the  widow  and  orphans  of  her  son 
Henry,  who  died  while  Manager  of  the  Edinburgh  Theatre. 
She  was  the  crude  mother  of  the  animal  world,  and,  like  all 
organisms  that  conform  to  Nature's  plan — 

"  Bounded  by  themselves,  and  unregardful 
In  what  state  God's  other  works  may  be" — 

she  felt  strong  and  satisfied,  and  lived  her  life  untroubled 
by  the  prick  of  conscience. 

Late  in  1784,  or  early  in  1785,  Lord  Hardwicke  introduced 
to  her  a  book  of  Greek  history.  She  was  studying  a  new 
part  (Desdemona)  which  allowed  her  little  time  for  inde- 
pendent reading,  but  when  Lord  Hardwicke  asked  her  how 
she  liked  the  book,  she  replied,  in  an  unpublished  letter 
among  the  recently  acquired  Hardwicke  MSS  in  the  British 
Museum — 

"  I  think  the  memoirs  of  Pericles  laid  the  strongest  hold 
on  me,  this  perhaps  may  be  accounted  for  by  my  presumption 
having  felt  myself  in  some  measure  in  his  situation  having 
been  the  favourite  of  the  Mob  one  year — and  the  next  de- 
graded by  them — it  remains  only — that  I  may  like  him  be 
reinstated,  when  Malice  is  cold,  and  Candour  takes  its  turn. 
Your  Lordship  does  me  honour  in  desiring  to  be  mentioned  in 
my  Memoirs  if  the  world  shou'd  ever  be  troubled  with  them 
it  will  reflect  great  honour  on  me  to  say  I  had  the  suffrage 
of  so  noble  a  Personage." 

Mrs.  Siddons  sometimes  spelt  amiss,  but  she  rarely,  if 
ever,  wrote  shambling  English.  At  all  times,  she  was,  if 
an  increasingly  procrastinating  and  infrequent,  a  fluent  and 
able  letter-writer,  though,  occasionally,  her  tendency  towards 
plausibility,  le  beau  geste,  and  even  self-righteousness  rather 


MRS.  SIDDONS 

HY    GAINSBOROUGH 


HER  STARRING  EXPERIENCES  109 

mars  the  impression  of  her  which  her  letters  would,  otherwise, 
unfailingly  produce. 

By  one  of  life's  unlucky  concatenations,  Dublin  was, 
once  more,  in  1802,  the  scene  of  a  reported  niggardliness  on 
Mrs.  Siddons's  part.  Then,  Frederic  E.  Jones,  a  man  of 
property  and  position,  who,  at  the  time,  magnificently 
managed  the  Theatre  Royal,  appears  to  have  failed  to  carry 
into  effect  her  assent — her  cheerful  assent,  she  afterwards  called 
it — to  his  proposal  that  she  should  give  her  services  in  a  per- 
formance for  the  benefit  of  the  Lying-in  Hospital.  Wrongful 
report  charged  her  with  the  whole  fault  of  the  omission  of 
the  performance,  her  popularity  was  again  threatened,  and, 
although  the  trustees  of  the  hospital  publicly  contradicted  the 
aspersion  on  her — 'Mrs.  Siddons  had  most  certainly  never 
refused  to  act  for  them,  and  indeed  had  never  been  requested 
to  do  so,'  she  thought  it  necessary  to  address  to  '  that  tyrant 
Jones ' *  an  open  letter,  explanatory  of,  at  all  events,  her 
innocence  of  having  been  unready  to  assist  *  so  laudable  an 
institution/ 

Mrs.  Siddons  took  Edinburgh  by  storm.  She  first  went  there 
for  a  nine  nights'  engagement,2  in  1784,  on  her  way  to  Dublin 
and  Cork.  "  They  treated  me,"  she  said  of  the  Scotch,  writing, 
on  June  2ist,  to  Whalley,  "most  nobly."  She  had  cause  to 
intensify  the  remark  with  each  fresh  visit  she  made.  On  one 
day,  2550  people  applied  for  the  650  seats  at  the  disposal  of 
the  Management,  and  the  Church  Synod  had  to  arrange  its 
meetings  to  suit  her  performances.  Siddons  fever  ran  so  high, 
and  a  sense  of  the  grotesque  was  so  lacking,  that,  once,  at  a 
later  date, '  the  Athenians '  encored  her  sleep-walking  scene  in 
Macbeth,  till  she  was  obliged  to  go  through  it  again.  At 
Edinburgh,  in  1784,  in  nine  nights,  she  cleared  considerably 
over  fyoo.  She  carried  home,  not  only  gold,  but  silver.  The 
latter  took  the  form,  in  1784,  of  a  hot-water  urn  ('an  elegant 
tea-vase'),  in  1788,  of  a  'massive'  tea-tray,  presented  by 
the  Faculty  of  Advocates,  and  inscribed  '  To  Mrs.  Siddons 
As  an  Acknowledgment  of  Respect  for  Eminent  Virtues, 

1  Mrs.  Galindo's  letter  to  Mrs.  Siddons,  Appendix,  48,  1809. 

2  She  actually  acted  ten  nights,  in  the  ordinary  way,  an  eleventh  for  the  benefit 
of  '  the  Charity  Workhouse,'  and  a  twelfth  for  her  own  benefit. 


i  io  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

and  of  Gratitude  for  Pleasure  Received  From  Unrivalled 
Talents.' 

Macbeth  and  Douglas,  the  two  national  plays,  were  the 
pieces  that  best  pleased  Scots  audiences.  At  Douglas,  Cale- 
donia clapped  its  hands  and  wings,  and,  once  again,  declared 
Home  the  Shakespeare,  or  something  greater,  of  his  country. 
Then,  or  earlier,  Walpole  might  have  walked  in  peril  of  his  life 
had  he  murmured  over  the  Border  what,  in  his  acid  and  lively 
way,  he  proclaimed  at  *  Twittenham ' — that  he  knew  no  prose 
written  by  Home  but  his  poetry.  In  England,  only  Mrs. 
Siddons's  genius  kept  Douglas  so  long  in  the  catalogue  of 
acting  plays.1 

Boaden  discovered  that  it  was  the  civilising  influence  of 
the  University  that  caused  Mrs.  Siddons  to  be  so  much  admired 
in  Edinburgh — "the  neighbourhood  of  learning  is  always 
friendly  to  taste."  Very  likely,  he  was  right.  She  was 
welcomed  into  Edinburgh's  best  society.  On  her  first  visit,  she 
made  the  acquaintance  of  Hume,  Blair,  Home,  Mackenzie,  and 
Beattie.  On  later  occasions,  she  met  Henry  Erskine,  and  was 
the  guest  of  the  Great  Unknown. 

When  she  began  to  act  before  a  Scots  audience  she  was 
chagrined  by  its  impassivity.  "  Stupid  people,  stupid  people  ! " 
she  involuntarily  murmured,  on  the  stage.  Afterwards,  she 
used  to  amuse  London  friends  by  describing  how,  at  last,  as 
Belvidera,  she  nerved  herself  for  one  tremendous  effort,  as  who 
should  say,  Logs,  if  you  cannot  rise  to  that,  I  despair  of  you! 
At  the  conclusion  of  the  passage,  and  as  she  paused,  exhausted, 
for  breath,  the  comfortless  silence  was  thawed  by  a  voice 
saying,  "  That's  no  bad ! "  which  opened  the  floodgates  of 
laughter,  and  of  loud  and  long  applause.  After  this,  Edinburgh 
audiences  wallowed  in  responsiveness.  Tears  and  groans  rent 
the  theatre,  and  gentlemen,  as  well  as  ladies,  fell  into  fits.  To 
the  actress,  these  physical  tributes  were — in  her  top-window 
language — the  '  public  marks  '  of  the  '  gratifying  suffrages '  of 
her  '  northern  friends.' 

1  No  better  criticism  of  Douglas  exists  than  is  to  be  found  in  a  letter,  in  Mr.  J. 
H.  Leigh's  Collection,  from  Garrick  to  Lord  Bute,  July  loth,  1756,  included  in  Some 
Unpublished  Letters  of  David  Garrick,  Edited  by  George  Pierce  Baker,  Boston, 
1907. 


HER  STARRING  EXPERIENCES  in 

With  her  first  Edinburgh  Manager,  John  Jackson,  Mrs. 
Siddons's  relations  were  less  rosy.  Her  acting  brought  in  big 
receipts,  but  so  much  of  the  stream  poured  solely  into  her  pocket 
that,  at  the  end  of  the  engagement,  Jackson,  who  was  lessee  as 
well  as  Manager,  found  he  had  made  a  bad  speculation.  After 
he  had  agreed  to  the  star's  original  terms,  '  a  leading  person  in 
the  Parliament  House '  started  a  £200  subscription,  as  to  the 
destination  of  which  Manager  and  actress  disagreed,  and, 
though  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Siddons  insisted  on  an  arrangement  more 
favourable  to  themselves  than  the  first  proposed,  on  account  of 
this  assistance  to  the  Manager,  eventually  the  £200  subscription 
found  its  way  into  the  Siddons  bank  balance,  as  a  separate 
item. 

In  1788,  Mrs.  Siddons  again  brought  Jackson  ill  luck, 
though,  this  time,  the  fault  lay  solely  with  some  turbulent  limbs 
of  the  law  who  would  not  suffer  the  parts  of  Jaffier  and  Pierre,  in 
Venice  Preserved,  to  be  cast  according  to  Jackson's  managerial 
judgment.1  By  1790,  Jackson  was  involved  in  difficulties, 
'connected  with  his  great  expense  in  the  engagement  of  the 
principal  London  performers.'  From  1791  to  1800,  Stephen 
Kemble  leased  the  Theatre  Royal.  A  good  deal  later,  we  shall 
find  Mrs.  Siddons  acting  there  under  the  Management  of  her 
son,  Henry,  who  became  lessee  in  1809,  partly  in  consequence 
of  his  marriage  with  the  actor-dramatist,  Charles  Murray's, 
daughter.  Sir  Walter  Scott  had  been  anxious  to  see  Henry 
Siddons  lessee  and  Manager.  He  knew  the  family  interest 
would  bring  his  friend,  Kemble,  as  well  as  Kemble's  diviner 
sister,  oftener  to  Scotland.  He  purchased  a  share  in  the 
concern,  and  became  one  of  the  acting  trustees  for  the  general 
body  of  proprietors. 

Mrs.  Siddons  was  an  indefatigable  tourer.  In  August,  1795, 
she  told  Whalley  she  had  travelled,  on  tour,  that  summer, 
nearly  nine  hundred  miles.  It  was  mentioned  as  a  great  feat 
that,  in  1784,  she  acted  in  London,  Bath,  and  Reading,  within 
four  days,  and,  in  estimating  her  rarely  remitted  labours,  the 
fatigue  and  discomforts  of  moving  from  place  to  place  by  stage 
coach  are  an  element  not  to  be  overlooked. 

1  "Mrs.  Siddons's  performances  were  suspended  for  a  whole  week." — Genest, 
vii.  129. 


112  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

"Here  I  am,"  she  writes,  in  May,  1796,  "sitting  close  in 
a  little  dark  room,  in  a  little  wretched  inn,  in  a  little  poking 
village  called  Newport  Pagnell.  I  am  on  my  way  to  Manchester, 
where  I  am  to  act  for  a  fortnight;  from  whence  I  am  to  be 
whirled  to  Liverpool,  there  to  do  the  same.  From  thence  I 
skim  away  to  York  and  Leeds." 

LJnbeautiful  Leeds  she  called,  by  the  way,  the  dirtiest, 
most  disagreeable  town  'in  His  Majesty's  dominions,  God 
bless  him.'  Most  years  she  played  two  or  three  weeks' 
engagement  round  Wilkinson's  Yorkshire  circuit.  She  told 
Whalley  that,  six  months  before  she  reached  York,  all  the 
boxes  were  taken.  Wilkinson  gave  her  the  highest  stage 
character : — 

"  She  never  heeds  trouble — if  truly  indisposed,  and  possible 
to  rise  from  her  bed,  she  is  certain  in  her  duty  to  the  public. 
She  has  not  known  until  she  arrived  at  York,  what  play  she 
was  first  to  appear  in,  or  what  characters  she  was  to  act  during 
a  course  of  six  plays.  If  a  dress  has  not  arrived  in  time  by 
the  carriers,  she  sometimes  has  asked  what  was  to  play  such 
a  night ;  never  saying  such  a  play  will  do  better  than  another, 
or  such  a  part  would  be  too  fatiguing." 

She  played  at  Plymouth,  Exeter,  Bath,  Birmingham ;  at 
Liverpool,  at  Manchester,  at  Glasgow,  at  Belfast.1  Wide 
was  her  parish,  and  houses  far  asunder,  but,  everywhere,  was 
Tom  Tidler's  ground,  and,  at  home,  there  were  five  or  six 
mouths  looking  up  to  be  fed.  Mrs.  Siddons  could  make  as 
much  in  two  months  on  tour  as  in  the  entire  winter  (not 
counting  her  benefits)  in  London. 

It  was  impossible  that  the  star  should  always  find  herself 
well  supported  in  country  theatres.  A  propos,  her  daughter, 
Sally,  aet.  23,  wrote,  on  one  occasion,  from  Cheltenham,  to 
Sally  Bird,  regarding  '  Callista,'  "  It  destroys  all  my  fine  feel- 
ings when  I  see  my  Mother  sigh  and  lament  herself  for  the 
sake  of  such  wretched  creatures."2  Another  provincial  trial 
Mrs.  Siddois  could  not  easily  away  with  was  the  less 
cultivated,  i.t\  the  less  rapturous  and  prolonged  applause.  In 

1  In  John  Halifax,  Gentleman,  we  see  her,  in  her  sedan,  on  her  way  to  the  theatre, 
in  'Coffee-house  Yard,  Coltham.' 

2  An  Artist's  Lone  Story  >  50. 


HER  STARRING  EXPERIENCES  113 

her  own  words,  "A  cold  respectfulness  chills  and  deadens  an 
actress,  and  throws  her  back  upon  herself,  whereas  the  warmth 
of  approbation  confirms  her  in  the  character^  and  she  kindles 
with  the  enthusiasm  she  feels  around."  Could  the  whole 
situation  of  the  player  be  more  intelligibly  put  ? 


8 


IX 
HER  INTERPRETATION  OF  SHAKESPEARE 

DURING  the  theatrical  season  of  1782-83,  Mrs.  Siddons 
essayed  no  Shakespearean  part.  Why  she  was  allowed 
to  remain  even  so  long  out  of  the  central  current  in 
the  dramatic  channel  we  have  no  means  of  knowing.  The 
European  Magazine  for  October,  1783,  rashly  suggested  that  her 
abstention  was  due  to  'reasons  which  she  either  did  not  per- 
ceive, or  would  not  dare  to  own.' 

In  fixing  on  her  first  Shakespearean  character  —  im- 
personated, November  3rd,  1783,  the  opening  night  of  her 
second  season — she  made  a  singular  choice,  which  it  would 
be  hard  to  believe  was  not  her  own.  Instead  of  plunging 
into  the  rich  Italian  love-making  of  Juliet,  or  identifying 
herself  with  Cordelia — with  whom  she  would  have  been  more 
in  sympathy  than  with  Juliet — she  elected  to  become  the 
heroine  of  the  dark  and  painful  comedy  of  Measure  for 
Measure. 

Shakespeare's  Isabella  is  one  of  the  very  few  women  in 
drama  who  represent  principle,  not  passion.  Measure  for 
Measure  is  a  problem  play.  The  problem  is  whether  a  sister 
will  purchase  her  brother's  life  with  her  own  dishonour.  For 
a  similar  problem,  with  a  dissimilar  solution,  Maeterlinck's 
Monna  Vanna  ought  to  be  read  side  by  side  with  Measure  for 
Measure. 

Isabella's  grandly  imaginative  diction  could  not,  in  the 
flesh,  have  been  Mrs.  Siddons's,  but,  as  regarded  the  rest  of 
the  character — the  fierce  chastity,  the  inexistence  of  one 
moment's  hesitancy  on  the  score  that  it  is  not  her  own  life,  but 
some  one  else's,  she  is  sacrificing  to  her  cloistral  whiteness,  the 
alacrity  with  which  she  accepts  the  repulsive  substitution  of 


114 


HER  INTERPRETATION  OF  SHAKESPEARE   115 

Mariana — Mrs.  Siddons  was  the  actress  of  all  time  best  fitted 
to  impersonate  such  a  temperament. 

No  very  direct  criticism  of  her  acting  of  Isabella  is  forth- 
coming. Boaden  and  Campbell  both  gave  a  general  eulogium ; 
the  European  Magazine  spoke — on  principle — slightingly  of 
the  performance;  it  seems  clear  that  not  even  Mrs.  Siddons, 
standing  before  the  house  in  her  serious  beauty,  first  to  plead 
for  her  brother,  then  to  disown  him,  could  make  the  rigidity  of 
the  part  acceptable.  Though  it  is  true  she  acted  it  seven  times 
in  her  final  season,  her  Shakespeare's  Isabella  never  attained 
the  popularity  of  her  Southerne's  Isabella. 

She  was  too  intellectual  an  actress  to  be  content  to  remain 
any  longer  outside  the  circle  of  those  Campbell  calls  'the 
great  females  of  Shakespeare.'  On  December  loth,  1783,  she 
appeared  in  the  brief,  but  magnificent,  part  of  Constance,  in 
King  John. 

It  is  impossible  to  believe  that,  even  in  the  case  of  the 
finest  players,  profound  emotion,  profoundly  imagined,  can 
spring  out  complete  and  full  at  a  first  performance.  To  the 
merely  literary  student,  so  great  a  character  as  Constance  is 
enigmatic,  by  reason  of  its  simplicity,  and  the  self-consistency 
of  it  only  rounds  into  view  after  repeated  reading.  The  very 
fact  that  the  part  is  traditionally  remembered  as  one  of  Mrs. 
Siddons's  highest  achievements,  while  its  original  production 
was,  in  many  quarters,  adversely  criticised,  points  to  an  im- 
personation that  gained  in  maturity,  force,  and  volume  as  time 
went  on.  The  genesis  of  a  great  impersonation  is  as  baffling 
to  trace  as  the  genesis  of  any  other  work  of  art,  but,  at  least, 
we  may  be  sure  that  no  great  impersonation  sets  solid  at  the 
first  representation.  Kemble  expressively  termed  his  early 
Wolsey  'raw,'  and  Mrs.  Siddons  'used  to  pride  herself,'  says 
Campbell,  on  having  improved  in  all  her  great  characters.  She 
told  Mrs.  Jameson  that  she  had  played  Lady  Macbeth  during 
thirty  years,  and  scarcely  once,  without  carefully  reading  over 
her  part,  and,  generally,  the  whole  play,  in  the  morning ;  and 
that  she  never  read  over  the  play  without  finding  something 
new  in  it ;  "  something,"  she  said,  "  which  had  not  struck  me 
so  much  as  it  ought  to  have  struck  me."  The  player's  ac- 
cumulating experience  of  life  is  bound  to  ripen  each  one  of 


u6  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

his,  or  her,  interpretations  of  it.  No  sincere  actor  ever  '  put  a 
part  to  bed.' 

The  character  of  Constance  deeply  interested,  and,  at  the 
same  time,  perplexed  the  thoughtful  actress.  She  felt  the 
difficulty  of  maintaining  its  cumulative  wrath  and  desperation, 
in  view  of  the  calamities  that  cause  these  feelings  being  always 
developed  when  Constance  is  off  the  stage. 

"Gone  to  be  married!  gone  to  swear  a  peace!" 

and 

"No,  I  defy  all  counsel,  all  redress" 

are  two  as  difficult  entrances  as  are  to  be  found  in  drama.  As 
a  means  towards  stimulating  herself  into  Constance's  continuously 
accelerated  exasperation,  Mrs.  Siddons  hit  on  a  childlike  device. 
She  described  it  in  those  remarks  on  the  character  of  Constance 
(they  are  rather — as  was  natural — memoranda  on  her  acting  of 
the  part)  which  she  gave  Campbell  for  inclusion  in  his  biography 
of  her : — 

"  The  quality  of  abstraction  has  always  appeared  to  me  so 
necessary  in  the  art  of  acting,  that  ...  I  wish  my  opinion  were 
of  sufficient  weight  to  impress  the  importance  of  this  power 
on  the  minds  of  all  candidates  for  dramatic  fame.  .  .  .  When- 
ever I  was  called  upon  to  personate  the  character  of  Constance, 
I  never,  from  the  beginning  of  the  play  to  the  end  of  my  part 
in  it,  once  suffered  my  dressing-room  door  to  be  closed,  in 
order  that  my  attention  might  be  constantly  fixed  on  those 
distressing  events  which,  by  this  means,  I  could  plainly  hear 
going  on  upon  the  stage,  the  terrible  effects  of  which  progress 
were  to  be  represented  by  me.  Moreover,  I  never  omitted 
to  place  myself,  with  Arthur  in  my  hand,  to  hear  the  march, 
when,  upon  the  reconciliation  of  England  and  France,  they 
enter  the  gates  of  Angiers  to  ratify  the  contract  of  marriage 
between  the  Dauphin  and  the  Lady  Blanche ;  because  the 
sickening  sounds  of  that  march  would  usually  cause  the  bitter 
tears  of  rage,  disappointment,  betrayed  confidence,  baffled 
ambition,  and,  above  all,  the  agonizing  feelings  of  maternal 
affection  to  gush  into  my  eyes.  In  short,  the  spirit  of  the  whole 
drama  took  possession  of  my  mind  and  frame,  by  my  attention 
being  incessantly  riveted  to  the  passing  scenes." 


HER  INTERPRETATION  OF  SHAKESPEARE      117 

Though  there  was  more  in  Mrs.  Siddons's  Constance  than 
came  of  leaving  a  dressing-room  door  open,  it  is  interesting 
to  be  let  into  the  technical  *  secret '  of  an  artistic  triumph.  As 
we  might  know  from  the  above  extract,  Mrs.  Siddons  was 
completely  in  accord  with  Sir  Henry  Irving  as  to  the  value 
of  the  process  he  called  passing  a  character  through  t  he  actor's 
own  mind.  She,  in  her  more  dictionary  English,  said,  still 
writing  of  the  part  of  Constance,  the  same  thing  : — 

"If  it  ever  were,  or  ever  shall  be,  pourtrayed  with  its 
appropriate  and  solemn  energy,  it  must  be  then,  and  then  only, 
when  the  power  I  have  so  much  insisted  on  [i.e.  of  *  abstraction '] 
co-operating  also  with  a  high  degree  of  enthusiasm,  shall  have 
transfused  the  mind  of  the  actress  into  the  person  and  situation 
of  the  august  and  afflicted  Constance" 

Mrs.  Siddons's  playing  of  Constance  was  the  highest  thing 
she  had  yet  grasped.  Her  mere  bearing  in  the  part  was 
a  piece  of  genius.  Campbell,  who  could  always  speak  well 
regarding  anything  he  had  actually  seen,  said  of  her  Constance's 
*  vicissitudes  of  gesture'  that  they  made  you  imagine  her  body 
thought.  In  other  words,  every  muscle  and  nerve  of  her  acted. 
At  all  times,  she  had  that  Bandar  celeste' — Romola  Melema's 
way,  that  (as  Northcote  said  of  the  walk  of  Italian  women  in 
general)  c  affects  you  like  seeing  a  whole  procession.'  We  can 
fancy  the  eloquence  of  motion  with  which,  as  untameable 
Constance,  she  came  down  the  ensemble  between  the  recreant 
princes.  We  can  fancy,  too,  the  regal  gesture  with  which,  in 
the  third  act,  she  took  the  earth,  as  her  niece,  Fanny  Kemble, 
says, '  not  for  a  shelter,  not  for  a  grave,  or  for  a  resting-place, 
but  for  a  throne.' 

In  her  last  scene,  the  anguish  she  threw  into  Constance's 
speeches  about  her  'pretty  Arthur,'  her  'gracious  creature/ 
waxing,  in  captivity, 

'as  hollow  as  a  ghost, 
As  dim  and  meagre  as  an  ague's  fit,' 

made  a  high-water  mark  in  Shakespearean  expression.  These 
speeches,  uttered  by  her,  came  less  as  the  cries  of  a  robbed 
lioness  than  as  the  agony  of  an  imaginative  woman,  convinced, 
without  certain  knowledge,  of  her  tender  child's  suffering  death. 
The  strong  motherliness  in  Mrs.  Siddons's  nature  helped  to 


ii8  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

make  her  Constance  so  real  and  great.  Her  acting,  said 
Boaden,  always  seemed  to  need  '  the  inspiration  of  some  duty,' 
and  if  for  '  duty '  we  substitute  '  family  affection/  the  comment 
becomes  all  the  more  just.  Broadly  speaking,  Mrs.  Siddons 
was  best  in  parts  that  were  most  like  herself. 

Could  the  truth  be  ascertained,  the  key  to  the  success  of  any 
actor  in  a  special  character  would,  in  all  probability,  be  found 
in  certain  complexional  resemblances,  independent  of  genius, 
between  the  two,  which  enable  a  ready  and  perfect  identification 
to  take  place.  Not  that  the  man  who  plays  a  villain  is 
a  villain,  but,  deep  in  *  the  buried  temple/  an  actor  must  possess 
some  natural  adaptability  to  certain  roles,  and  not  to  others. 

Scott  could  only  imagine  Lady  Macbeth  '  with  the  form  and 
features  of  Siddons/  and,  even  to  the  present  day,  what  seen 
Lady  Macbeth  stands  as  vividly  before  the  mind  as  the  Siddons 
of  tradition,  laving  her  hands,  in  what  Hazlitt  ambiguously 
termed  '  the  night  scene '  ?  She  first  played  the  part  in  London 
on  February  2nd,  1785,  her  benefit  night.  She  was  thirty — in 
the  plenitude  of  her  saliency  and  power.  Yet,  none  the  less, 
this  was  a  supreme  test,  and  some  of  the  finest  brains  in 
England — Burke,  Gibbon,  Reynolds,  Fox,  and  Windham — were 
present  to  estimate  the  performance. 

It  proved  to  be  something  to  which  the  word  '  performance ' 
seems  entirely  inadequate.  It  was  transfiguration,  transub- 
stantiation.  The  part  appeared  made  for  her  by  the  same  instinct 
which,  in  ancient  times,  combined  poet  and  prophet  in  one. 

The  detractors  who  had  persisted  that  she  was  only  equal 
to  Rowe's,  Voltaire's,  and  Cumberland's  showy  shadows  were 
put  to  silence.  Reynolds's  golden  idea  of  identifying  her  with 
Melpomene  was  confirmed  by  all  classes  of  the  public.  In  this 
crucial  essay,  she  definitively  showed  that  her  true  field  lay 
among  the  high  actions  and  passions  which  make  great  drama 
a  discipline  in  ethics. 

We  have  followed  her  own  account  of  the  infiltration  of  the 
part  into  her  imagination,1  and,  through  Campbell,  she  be- 
queathed to  the  public  a  written  summary  of  her  reflections 
on  Lady  Macbeth's  personality,  reflections  which,  though  not 
particularly  subtle,  and  histrionic,  in  point  of  view,  rather  than 

1  P.  39- 


HER  INTERPRETATION  OF  SHAKESPEARE     119 

critical,  are  extremely  interesting,  coming  whence  they  do.  It 
would  not  have  been  easy  for  Johnson  to  say  of  her  what  he 
said  of  Garrick — that  he  very  much  doubted  if  he  ever  examined 
one  of  Shakespeare's  plays  from  the  first  scene  to  the  last. 

Lady  Macbeth  has  been  only  less  patient  than  Hamlet  of 
divers  interpretations.  Mrs.  Siddons  imagined  her  a  fragile 
blonde,  and  would  have  applied  to  her  the  lines  she  was  fond 
of  quoting  from  Marmion — 

' c  It  was  a  fearful  sight  to  see 
Such  high  resolve  and  constancy, 
In  form  so  soft  and  fair." 

Two  further  new  suggestions  occur  in  Mrs.  Siddons's 
remarks.  She  held  that  Lady  Macbeth  forecast  and  intended 
the  murder  of  Banquo  and  his  son  as  early  as  Macbeth  himself, 
for  the  simple  reason  that  when,  as  his  first  hint  of  it  to  her, 
Macbeth  says — 

"Thou  know'st,  that  Banquo,  and  his  Fleance  lives," 

her  reply  is 

"But  in  them  nature's  copy's  not  eterne." 

Conformably  to  this,  Mrs.  Siddons  believed  that,  at  the 
banquet,  Lady  Macbeth,  equally  with  her  husband,  saw 
Banquo's  ghost,  though  with  a  scheming  woman's  self-control 
and  a  wife's  nobler  protectiveness  of  her  husband's  credit, 
she  smothered,  and  denied,  the  fact. 

In  acting  the  part,  the  first  great  original  touch  Mrs. 
Siddons  gave  was  her  suspension  of  voice  in  "they  made 
themselves — air"  the  second,  her  amazing  burst  of  energy 
over  "  shalt  be,"  in 

"Glamis  thou  art,  and  Cawdor — and  shalt  be 
What  thou  art  promis'd  " 

— an  epitome  of  the  play. 

She  became  still  more  decisive  and  terrible  in  the  succeeding 
scenes,  each  of  which  she  made  culminate  in  a  line — 

"O  never 
Shall  sun  that  morrow  see  ! " 

"Give  ME  the  daggers." 

"My  hands  are  of  your  colour." 

Her  words  were  not  mere  words,  but  tremendous  suggestions. 


120  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

To  Mrs.  Jameson  we  owe  the  record  of  how,  in  Act  I.  7, 
Mrs.  Siddons  adopted,  successively,  three  different  intonations 
in  giving  the  words,  "  We  fail."  At  first,  it  was  a  quick, 
contemptuous  interrogation — "  We  fail  ? "  Afterwards,  with 
the  note  of  exclamation,  and  an  accent  of  indignant  astonish- 
ment, she  laid  the  principal  emphasis  on  we — "  We  fail!" 
Lastly,  she  fixed  on  what,  says  Mrs.  Jameson, 

"  I  am  convinced  is  the  true  reading — '  We  fail,'  with  the 
simple  period,  modulating  her  voice  to  a  deep,  low,  resolute 
tone,  which  settled  the  issue  at  once,  as  though  she  said,  '  If 
we  fail,  why,  then  we  fail,  and  all  is  over.'  .  .  .  The  effect  was 
sublime." 

At  the  solemn  supper,  where  Mrs.  Pritchard's  acting  was 
specially  remembered,  Mrs.  Siddons  was  transcendent,  whether 
in  the  derision  by  which  she  laboured  to  make  Macbeth  play 
the  host,  or  in  her  royal  courtesy  in  soothing,  and,  finally, 
dismissing  the  guests.  The  added  burden  of  acting  exacted 
by  the  responsibility  of  her  theory,  that  Lady  Macbeth,  too, 
saw  the  spectre,1  must  have  demanded  the  utmost  imagination 
and  judgment.  It  is  worth  knowing  that  when,  after  retirement, 
Mrs.  Siddons  used  to  read  the  play  in  public,  the  speeches 
she  made  most  striking  were  those  of  Macbeth.2 

A  part  of  Professor  George  Joseph  Bell's  remarkable  notes 
(dated  1809,  extracted  from  'three  volumes,  lettered  "Siddons,"' 
and  originally  printed  by  permission  of  his  son,  Mr.  John 
Bell,  of  the  Calcutta  Bar)  on  Mrs.  Siddons's  playing,  in 
Edinburgh,  of  Lady  Macbeth  and  other  Shakespearean 
characters  have  come  down  to  us,  in  two  articles,3  included 
in  the  posthumous  Papers,  Literary,  Scientific,  etc.,  by  Professor 
H.  C.  Fleeming  Jenkin ;  and,  by  Mrs.  Fleeming  Jenkin's 
kindness,  I  am  permitted  to  quote  from  them  here.  Professor 
Bell's  are  not  alone  the  notes  of  a  rarely  keen  spectator,  but, 

1  In  1794,  Kemble,  on  the  authority  of  Robert  Lloyd's  *The  Actor,  banished  the 
visible  form  of  Banquo's  ghost,  but  reinstated  it  on  a  general  protest,  and  the  ghost 
remained,  till  Irving  unseated  it.     For  an  able  discussion  of  Banquo's  ghost,  see 
Les  Theatres  Anglais,  par  Georges  Bourdon. 

2  Diaries  of  a  Lady  of  Quality   (Miss  Wynn),  edited  by  Abraham   Hayward 
(2nd  ed.),  104.    1864. 

3  Reprinted    by   permission  of   the  Editors    of  the    Nineteenth    Century    and 
Macmillarts  Magazine. 


HER  INTERPRETATION  OF  SHAKESPEARE  121 

as  their  editor  remarked,  'written  apparently  on  the  spot, 
and  during  the  red-hot  glow  of  appreciation/  His  method 
of  record  was  to  annotate,  with  compressed  observations,  a 
printed  copy  of  the  play.  Dealing  with  Macbeth,  his  intro- 
ductory sentence,  "Of  Lady  Macbeth  there  is  not  a  great 
deal  in  this  play,  but  the  wonderful  genius  of  Mrs.  Siddons 
makes  it  the  whole,"  is  a  chapter  in  itself.  In  the  banquet 
scene,  at  the  dispersion  of  the  guests,  Professor  Bell  noted 
that  she  "  Descends  in  great  eagerness ;  voice  almost  choked 
with  anxiety  to  prevent  their  questioning ;  alarm,  hurry,  rapid 
and  convulsive  as  if  afraid  Macbeth  should  tell  of  the  murder 
of  Duncan."  In  support  of  his  initial  avouchment  that  a  great 
player  adds  very  much  even  to  Shakespeare,  Mr.  Bell  noted 
how  the  flagging  of  Lady  Macbeth's  spirit,  'the  melancholy 
and  dismal  blank  beginning  to  steal'  upon  her  were  more 
the  creation  of  Mrs.  Siddons  than  of  Shakespeare.  These 
manifestations  commenced  after  the  dismissal  of  the  guests 
in  her  two  lines, 

"Almost  at  odds  with  morning,  which  is  which," 

which  she  made  '  Very  sorrowful.     Quite  exhausted,'  and 

"You  lack  the  season  of  all  natures,  sleep," 

which  she  made  'feeble  now,  and  as  if  preparing  for  her  last 
sickness  and  final  doom.' 

Naturally,  and  as  we  learn  from  all  reporters,  Mrs.  Siddons 
reserved  the  profoundest  impression  of  all  for  the  sleep-walking 
scene.  She  has  described  her  preparatory  concentration,  and 
how,  when  she  sat  in  her  Drury  Lane  dressing-room,  striving 
to  abstract  herself  from  trivial  surroundings,  .Sheridan  came 
knocking,  and  would  not  be  refused,  because  he  wanted  to 
tell  her  she  would  spoil  everything  if  she  insisted  on  setting 
down  the  candlestick,  an  action  contrary  to  tradition  and  the 
custom  of  the  deceased  Mrs.  Pritchard.  But  1A  bas  la 
tradition!'  was  as  much  the  rule  of  Mrs.  Siddons  as  of  the 
other  Madame  Sarah,  and  so  the  candlestick  was  set  down 
that  she  might  the  better  (to  use  her  own  words)  '  act  over 
again  the  accumulated  horrors  of  her  whole  conduct,'  and  the 
house  was  enraptured,  and  Sheridan  converted.  We  know, 


122  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

too,  from  her  Memoranda,  how  she  carried  with  her  from  the 
stage  so  overmastering  an  impression  from  her  great  scene 
that,  to  the  astonishment  of  her  dresser,  she  stood,  unconsciously, 
before  the  glass,  wringing  her  hands,  and  repeating 

"Here's  the  smell  of  the  blood  still." 

And  what  an  imaginative  miracle  she  must  have  made 
of  that  scene  in  which  the  once  predominant  queen  is  beheld 
wandering,  through  galleries  of  hallucinations,  doomed,  like 
her  husband,  to  sleep  no  more !  Mrs.  Siddons's  horror-struck 
eyes,  her  '  almost  shroud-like  clothing,' l  her  groaning  whispers, 
her  uncanny  immobility,  even  in  gesticulating  and  walking 
about,  made  the  audience  shudder.  "  Never  moved,  sir,  never 
moved,"  said  Stephen  Kemble,  at  the  Garrick  Club,  when 
asked  what  had  been  his  sister's  special  '  note '  in  the  scene. 
And  yet  there  was  a  frightful  energy  in  her  way  of  rubbing 
at  the  damned  spot,  and  it  was  to  obtain  this  effect  she  set 
down  the  taper.  Apparently,  to  judge  from  the  following 
comments  by  the  Rev.  E.  Mangin,  she  again  took  up  the 
candle  before  her  exit.  He  writes  in  Piozziana  that  he  and 
Mrs.  Piozzi 

"  once  conversed  much  on  the  subject  of  the  manner  in  which 
Mrs.  Siddons  sought  for  the  taper  .  .  .  when  Mrs.  P.  seemed  to 
think  her  right ;  which,  I  confess,  I  did  not.  The  great  actress 
used,  as  it  were,  to  feel  for  the  light ;  that  is,  while  stalking 
backwards,  and  keeping  her  eyes  glaring  on  the  house :  whereas, 
I  have  somewhere  read,  or  heard,  that  the  somnambulist  appears 
to  look  steadily  at  the  object  in  contemplation,  and,  in  fact,  sees 
it  distinctly.  It  never  was  my  chance  to  encounter  any  one 
walking  in  sleep  .  .  .  but  an  ingenious  friend  of  mine,  and 
intimate  with  Mrs.  Siddons,  told  me  that  she  once  did  witness 
the  fact;  and  if  so,  in  all  likelihood  took  her  lesson  for  the 
splendid  scene  in  question  from  nature." 

In  the  sleep-walking  scene,  Professor  Bell  noted,  she  entered 
suddenly.  He  would  have  liked  her  to  enter  less  suddenly. 
"  A  slower  and  more  interrupted  step  more  natural."  "  She 
advanced  rapidly  to  the  table,  sets  down  the  light  and  rubs  her 
hand,  making  the  action  of  lifting  up  water  in  one  hand  at 

1  Boaden. 


V 


V 


HER  INTERPRETATION  OF  SHAKESPEARE      123 

intervals."  Against  her  final  'Oh,  oh,  oh!'  "this,"  he  notes, 
"  not  a  sigh.  A  convulsive  shudder — very  horrible.  A  tone  of 
imbecility  audible  in  the  sigh." 

John  Wilson,  in  the  character  of  the  Ettrick  Shepherd,  gives 
the  best  collective  impression  of  Mrs.  Siddons  in  this  greatest 
scene : — 

" '  Onwards  she  used  to  come  .  .  .  her  gran'  high  straicht- 
nosed  face,  whiter  than  ashes  ...  no  Sarah  Siddons — but  just 
Leddy  Macbeth  hersel  —  though  through  that  melancholy 
masquerade  o'  passion,  the  spectator  aye  had  a  confused 
glimmerin'  apprehension  o'  the  great  actress.  .  .  .  But,  Lord 
safe  us !  that  hollow,  broken-hearted  voice,  "  Out,  damned 
spot."  ...  It  was  a  dreadfu'  homily  yon,  sirs ;  and  wha  that 
saw't  would  ever  ask  whether  tragedy  or  the  stage  was  moral, 
purging  the  soul,  as  she  did,  wi'  pity  and  wi}  terror  ? ' ' 

Mrs.  Siddons  died  on  June  8th,  1831,  and,  next  day,  Fanny 
Kemble  decided  to  play  Lady  Macbeth  at  Covent  Garden — 
"  the  Lady  Macbeth  will  never  be  seen  again." 

Mrs.  Siddons  first  played  Desdemona  on  March  8th,  1785. 
It  was  the  next  part  she  undertook  after  her  conquest  of  Lady 
Macbeth,  and  her  plasticity — within  the  limits  of  tragedy — is 
symbolised  by  the  observation  some  one  made  that,  as  'the 
gentle  lady  married  to  the  Moor/  she  appeared  less  tall  than  in 
her  previous  incarnation.  She  was  a  deeply  affecting,  even  a 
winning  Desdemona,  and,  as  a  proof  that  she  was  not  always 
on  the  high  horse,  it  is  worth  noting  that  more  than  one  critic 
dwelt  on  her  '  familiar  persuasiveness '  in  the  earlier  scenes,  just 
as,  in  Romeo  and  Juliet,  Boaden  admired  her  '  artlessness '  with 
Lady  Capulet  and  the  Nurse.  Campbell  writes  : — 

"  I  never  wondered  at  her  in  any  character  so  much  as  in 
Desdemona.  .  .  .  The  first  time  I  saw  the  great  actress  represent 
Desdemona  was  at  Edinburgh,  when  I  was  a  very  young  man. 
I  had  gone  into  the  theatre  without  a  play-bill.  I  knew  not 
that  she  was  in  the  place.  I  had  never  seen  her  before  since  I 
was  a  child  of  eight  years  old ;  and,  though  I  ought  to  have 
recognised  her  from  that  circumstance,  and  from  her  picture, 
yet  I  was  for  sometime  not  aware  that  I  was  looking  at  the 
tragic  Queen.  But  her  exquisite  gracefulness,  and  the  emotions 
and  plaudits  of  the  house,  ere  long  convinced  me  that  she  must 


I24  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

be  some  very  great  actress, — only  the  notion  I  had  preconceived 
of  her  pride  and  majesty  made  me  think  that  '  this  soft,  sweet 
creature,  could  not  be  the  Siddons'  " 

Mrs.  Siddons  was  well  satisfied  with  her  effect  in  the  part. 
"  You  have  no  idea  how  the  innocence  and  playful  simplicity  of 
Desdemona  have  laid  hold  on  the  hearts  of  the  people,"  she 
wrote  to  the  Whalleys.  "  I  am  very  much  flattered  by  this,  as 
nobody  ever  has  done  anything  with  that  character  before." 

'D.  L.  April  30  [1785]  For  bt.  of  Mrs.  Siddons.  As  You 
Like  It.' l  In  the  earlier  provincial  period,  Rosalind  had  been  a 
favourite  character  of  Mrs.  Siddons's,  but  it  did  nothing  for  her 
now  established  fame ;  she  blundered,  indeed,  in  undertaking  it. 
With  the  consciousness  of  great  power  and  practice,  performers 
in  every  art  are  too  often  led  to  think  everything  possible  to 
their  efforts.  Rosalind's  whimsical  and  pensive  raillery  is  what 
Boaden  calls  sober  comedy,  and  contains  no  touch  of  the  farcical 
for  which  Mrs.  Siddons  would  have  been  totally  unfitted,  that 
being  'not  her  nature/  but  Rosalind's  essential  airiness,  the 
wohlgeboren  comedy  element,  was  almost  equally  outside  Mrs. 
Siddons's  compass.  Colman  called  her,  in  comedy,  a  frisking 
Gog,  and  the  better-bred  Charles  Young,  speaking  particularly 
of  her  Rosalind,  said — 

"  it  wanted  neither  playfulness  nor  feminine  softness ;  but  it 
was  totally  without  archness,  not  because  she  did  not  properly 
conceive  it — but  how  could  such  a  countenance  be  arch  ?  " 

Even  so  devout  an  admirer  as  the  Rt.  Hon.  William 
Windham  was  relatively  lukewarm  as  to  Rosalind.  On  June 
7th,  1786,  he  entered  in  his  Diary — "  Mrs.  Siddons  did  *  Rosalind ' 
much  better  than  the  first  time,  but  .  .  .  there  is  a  want  of 
hilarity  in  it ;  it  is  just,  but  not  easy.  The  highest  praise  that 
can  be  given  to  her  comedy  is,  that  it  is  the  perfection  of  art ; 
but  her  tragedy  is  the  perfection  of  nature."  2 

In  'assuming  the  male  habit,'  as  Rosalind,  she  was  too 
prudish  for  anything.  Her  beautiful  stage  figure  was  disguised 
by  'an  ambiguous  vestment  that  seemed  neither  male  nor 
female,'  and  some  one  observed  that  she  walked  about  as  little 

1  Genest. 

2  Cf.  Fanny  Burney  on  Mrs.  Siddons's  Rosalind,  Diary  of  Madame  D'Arblay, 
iv.  309,  1904-05. 


HER  INTERPRETATION  OF  SHAKESPEARE      125 

as  possible.  With  reference  to  a  later  '  page's '  dress,  she  wrote 
characteristically  to  William  Hamilton,  as  follows : — 

"  Mrs.  Siddons  would  be  extremely  obliged  to  Mr.  Hamilton, 
if  he  would  be  so  good  as  to  make  her  a  slight  sketch  for  a 
boy's  dress,  to  conceal  the  person  as  much  as  possible." 

The  newspapers  ridiculed  the  Rosalind  'vestment/  and 
fairly,  for  she  played  the  part  from  choice,  and  it  was  her  duty 
to  dress  it  naturally.  On  all  occasions,  she  was  ultra-nice  as  to 
'  the  limits '  (to  quote  Punch 's  Frenchman)  '  of  her  propriety.1 

Though  I  have  come  upon  no  written  notice  of  the  part,  I 
have  seen  a  small  print  of"  c  Mrs.  Siddons  in  Princess  Katherine ' 
King  Henry  V.  Act  V.  Scene  2.  '  Is  it  possible  dat  I  should 
love  the  Enemy  of  France  ? '  Burney  deltf  Thornthwaite  Sculp. 
Printed  for  J.  Bell.  British  Library,  Strand,  London,  Dec.  6th 
1785."  In  many  an  outrageously  bad  portrait,  engraved 
for  the  Ladys  Magazine,  the  European  Magazine,  etc.,  Mrs. 
Siddons,.  in  one  or  another  well-known  tragedy  part,  is  recog- 
nisable alone  by  the  ultra-long  nose  assigned  her. 

She  first  played  Portia,  after  1782,  in  London,  at  John 
Kemble's  benefit,  Drury  Lane,  April  6th,  1786.  In  1788,  she 
named  Portia  to  Walpole  (with  whom  she  was  then  beginning 
to  be  on  visiting  terms)  as  the  stock  part  in  which  she  most 
wished  him  to  see  her.  Perhaps  she  wished  to  wipe  out  ancient 
records  of  her  failure  in  The  Merchant  of  Venice,  perhaps  she 
judged  that  her  interlocutor  had  a  comedy  taste.  But  Horace, 
who  did  not  care  for  the  play,  and  was  clear  that  Mrs.  Siddons's 
warmest  devotees  did  'not  hold  her  above  a  db^zgoddess  in 
comedy,'  expressed  a  stronger  desire  to  see  her  as  Athenais, 
in  Nathaniel  Lee's  Theodosius.  "  Her  scorn,"  he  said,  "  is 
admirable." 

It  is  worth  contrasting  the  view  universally  taken  of  her 
unfitness  for  The  Merchant  of  Venice,  in  her  immaturity,  in 
1775,  with  what  Shelley's  second  father-in-law  had  to  say 
about  her  acting,  in  her  prime,  of  the  scenes  in  the  play  we 
should  least  associate  with  Siddons  genius.  Naturally,  to 
worship  the  risen  sun  is  easier  than  to  discern  streaks  of  dawn. 
Of  the  way  in  which,  in  Act  V.,  she  chaffed  Bassanio  as  to 
the  missing  ring,  Godwin  wrote : — 

"  There  was  something  inexpressibly  delightful  in  beholding 


126  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

a  woman  of  her  general  majesty  condescend  for  once  to  become 
sportive.  There  was  a  marvellous  grace  in  her  mode  of  doing 
this;  and  her  demure  and  queen-like  smile,  when,  appearing 
to  be  most  in  earnest,  she  was  really  most  in  jest,  gave  her  a 
loveliness,  that  it  would  be  in  vain  for  me  to  endeavour  to  find 
words  to  express." 

Though  she  never  played  Beatrice,  in  Much  Ado  about 
Nothing,  in  London,  she  had  played  the  part,  in  1779,  in 
Bath,  and,  in  August,  1795,  Miss  Seward  wrote  to  Whalley, 
after  seeing  her  go  through  some  of  her  Shakespearean  parts 
in  Birmingham,  "  O,  Mr.  Whalley,  what  an  enchanting  Beatrice 
she  is ! " 

As  Ophelia  (May  I5th,  1786),  which  Mrs.  Siddons  performed 
once  only,  there  could  be  no  danger  of  her  knowing  only  her 
own  '  lengths ' — as  was  said  of  Mrs.  Pritchard's  Lady  Macbeth, 
for,  as  we  have  seen,  she  had  long  ago  performed  the  tragedy's 
title-role,  never  re-acted  by  her  in  London.  She,  also,  sometimes 
played — not,  in  London,  till  April  29th,  1796 — its  premier 
female  part,  the  Queen.  We  read,  and  can  believe,  that  as 
piteous  Ophelia  she  was  no  mere  dishevelled  ballad-singer,  but 
made  the  utmost  of  the  character,  and  gave  peculiar  tragic 
power  to  the  c  rue  for  you '  addressed  to  Queen  Gertrude. 
Earlier  in  the  scene,  her  look  and  gesture  so  electrified  the 
Queen,  when  she  seized  her  arm,  that  the  startled  lady,  Mrs. 
Hopkins,  old  stager  though  she  was,  forgot  her  words.  Players, 
as  we  saw  in  the  case  of  Holman  and  the  elder  Macready, 
remain,  in  spite  of  inurement,  impressible  creatures. 

Ophelia  being  a  short  part,  Mrs.  Siddons  reappeared  before 
her  supporters  on  the  same  evening  as  the  Lady,  in  Dalton  and 
Colman's  arrangement  of  Comus.  Crabb  Robinson  found  that 
'  she  spoke  in  too  tragic  a  tone  for  the  situation  and  character.' 
It  was  the  only  time  in  his  life  he  saw  her  without  pleasure. 
Even  she  could  make  of  a  part  so  undramatic  nothing  more 
than  a  recitation,  so  far  comparable  to  Collins's  Ode  on  the 
Passions,  which  she  gave  after  King  Henry  the  Eighth^  on 
March  26th,  1792,  and  Robert  Merry's  Britannia's  Ode,  which 
she  several  times  recited,  on  George  Ill's  restoration  to  sanity 
in  1789,  dressed  as  Britannia,  and  seating  herself,  at  the  close, 
in  the  attitude  of '  La  Belle  Stuart '  on  the  penny. 


HER  INTERPRETATION  OF  SHAKESPEARE      127 

Turning  to  Boaden  for  his  notice  of  Imogen,  first  essayed  by 
Mrs.  Siddons  for  her  earlier  benefit  in  1787  (January  29th), 
we  find  him  heavily  rapturous.  It  is  doubtful,  all  the  same, 
whether  she  made  the  part  saisissant.  Imogen  is  handicapped 
by  her  story,  for,  without  venturing  so  far  as  to  term  Cymbeline 
— but  for  Imogen — one  of  Shakespeare's  failures,  it  may  be 
permitted  to  call  to  mind  that  Matthew  Arnold  styled  it  (in 
conversation)  '  an  odd,  broken-backed  sort  of  a  thing.' 

It  might  have  been  expected  that  Shakespeare's  great  filial 
part,  Cordelia,  a  character  more  hallowed,  and  more  human, 
than  Isabella,  would  have  appealed  both  to  Mrs.  Siddons's 
taste  and  genius.  Campbell,  however,  relates  that  she  spoke 
of  it  to  him  as  'a  secondary  part,'  and  said  she  should  not 
have  played  it  but  for  strengthening  her  brother's  Lear.  It  is 
to  be  feared  that  even  Mrs.  Siddons  estimated  a  part  largely 
by  the  number  of  its  entrances.  I  can  find  no  adequate  notices 
of  her  Cordelia.  She  first  played  it  for  her  benefit  of 
January  2ist,  1788.  The  part  had  never  been  popular  with 
eigteenth-century  people.  They  held  it  'a  character  of  no 
great  power.'  Mrs.  Siddons's  Cordelia,  it  should  be  remem- 
bered, was  the  degenerate  princess  of  Nahum  Tate  (of  Messrs. 
Tate  and  Brady,  Dry  Psalters). 

Descending  to  a  lower  platform,  Mrs.  Siddons  acted,  at 
Kemble's  benefit,  on  March  I3th,  1788,  Katharine,  in  Garrick's 
condensation  of  The  Taming  of  the  Shrew,  but  she  made  little 
impression  as  the  too  easily  subdued  termagant.  Of  what 
great  impression  is  the  part,  indeed,  capable? 

For  her  own  benefit,  May  5th,  1788,  All  for  Love,  Dryden's 
noble  imitation  of  Antony  and  Cleopatra,  was  revived,  with 
Mrs.  Siddons  as  the  heroine  Byron  calls  *  coquettish  to  the  last, 
as  well  with  the  asp  as  with  Antony.'  Once  or  twice,  Kemble 
asked  her  to  play  Shakespeare's  Cleopatra,  but,  for  what 
Genest  thought  'a  very  foolish  reason,'  she  always  declined. 
Her  reason  was,  at  least,  a  characteristic  one,  viz.,  that 
she  should  hate  herself  if  she  should  play  the  part  as  it  ought 
to  be  played. 

When  Johnson,  in  his  historic  interview  with  her,  asked 
her  *  which  of  Shakespeare's  characters  she  was  most  pleased 
with,'  she  answered  that  '  she  thought  the  character  of  Catherine 


128  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

in  Henry  the  Eighth  the  most  natural,'  and  the  Sage  coincided. 
With  her  assumption  of  Shakespeare's  last-written  female  part, 
on  November  25th,  1788,  we  first  feel  conscious  of  her  increas- 
ing suitability  for  forceful  and  magnanimous,  in  contradistinction 
to  tender  and  dependent,  characters.  Physical,  as  well  as 
mental,  maturity  is  becoming,  indeed,  necessary  to  Queen 
Katharine,  who  was  nearly  fifty,  as  much  as  to  Volumnia,  the 
mother  of  a  man.  Yet,  taking  Mrs.  Siddons's  Shakespearean 
parts  chronologically,  it  will  be  observed  that  she  played 
these  two  before  her  first  appearance,  in  London,  as  Juliet. 

Her  embodiment  of  Queen  Katharine  was  no  less  superb 
than  her  moral  rendering  of  the  character.  Much  of  her  awe 
and  majesty,  something  of  her  fire,  are  preserved  in  George 
Henry  Harlow's  velvety  piece  of  painting,  The  Court  for  the 
trial  of  Queen  Katharine,  and  Genest  says  that  a  person  who 
had  never  seen  Mrs.  Siddons  would  form,  from  this  portrait, 
a  better  idea  of  her  figure,  face,  and  manner  than  from  any 
description. 

We  may  compare  with  what  Campbell  and  every  other 
competent  reporter  had  to  say  of  the  enlightenment  she  shed 
on  Shakespeare  Erskine's  experto  crede  pronouncement  that  her 
speeches  were  a  school  for  orators.  In  Act  I.  of  King  Henry 
the  Eighth,  where  the  examination  of  Buckingham's  surveyor 
takes  place,  nothing  finer  was  ever  seen  on  the  stage  than  her 
judge-like  solemnity  when  she  interrupted  Wolsey's  instrument 
in  his  schooled  charge  against  Buckingham. 

''Take  good  heed 

You  charge  not  in  your  spleen  a  noble  person, 
And  spoil  your  nobler  soul !     I  say,  take  heed " 

Since  the  Portia  of  her  immaturity,  she  had  never  had 
such  an  opportunity  for  what  our  forefathers  called  level 
declamation  as  in  Katharine's  Trial.  Here  she  originated  a 
magnificent  piece  of  business  in  distinguishing,  by  her  gesture, 
pause,  and  emphasis,  between  Campeius  and  Wolsey — 

Campeius. — "It's  fit  ...  their  arguments 

Be  now  produc'd  and  heard. 
Q.  Kath. —  Lord  cardinal, — 

To  you  I  speak. 
WoL —  Your  pleasure,  madam?" 


HER  INTERPRETATION  OF  SHAKESPEARE   129 

When  the  legate  rises,  noted  Professor  Bell — 

"...  she  turns  from  him  impatiently ;  then  makes  a  sweet 
bow  of  apology,  but  dignified.  Then  to  Wolsey,  turned  and 
looking  from  him,  with  her  hand  pointing  back  to  him,  in  a 
voice  of  thunder,  'to  you  I  speak.'  This  too  loud  perhaps; 
you  must  recollect  her  insulted  dignity  and  impatience  of 
spirit  before  fully  sympathising  with  it." 

The  scene  where  the  two  churchmen  find  the  Queen 
among  her  ladies  gave  scope  for  all  Mrs.  Siddons's  intel- 
lectuality in  acting.  Out  of  her  realisation  of  the  just- 
minded,  long-enduring  Queen's  penetration  in  seeing  the 
snare  the  Cardinals  had  laid,  she  reconstructed  one  of  the 
most  bracing  of  Shakespeare's  scenes,  in  all  its  poignancy. 

The  following  description,  quoted  by  Campbell,  of 
Katharine's  death-scene  is  from  the  pen  of  James  Ballantyne. 
We  find  from  it  that,  here,  again,  Mrs.  Siddons  became  the 
uncompromising  realist  she  was  wont  to  be  in  scenes  of 
gradual  death : — 

"...  Through  her  feeble  frame  and  the  death-stricken  ex- 
pression of  her  features,  she  displayed  that  morbid  fretfulness  of 
look,  that  restless  desire  of  changing  place  and  position,  which 
frequently  attends  death.  She  sought  relief  from  the  irrita- 
bility of  illness  by  often  shifting  her  situation  in  her  chair; 
having  the  pillows  against  which  she  was  propped  every 
now  and  then  removed  and  re-adjusted ;  bending  forward 
and  sustaining  herself,  while  speaking,  by  the  pressure  of 
her  hands  upon  her  knees  ;  and  playing  amongst  her  drapery 
with  restless  and  uneasy  fingers." l 

Another  character  in  which  Mrs.  Siddons  collaborated 
with  Shakespeare  was  Volumnia  in  Coriolanus.  She  first 
played  the  part  on  February  7th,  1789,  and  it  at  once 
became  one  of  her  finest.  Twenty-two  years  later,  when 
she  was  playing  it — still,  to  her  brother's  famous  Coriolanus 

1  Campbell,  ii.  149-50.  I  have,  to  my  regret,  been  unable  to  trace  an  existent 
copy  of  the  book  quoted,  viz.,  Dramatic  Characters  of  Mrs.  Siddons,  Edinburgh, 
1812.  It  consisted  of  criticisms,  most  of  which  had  appeared  in  Ballantyne's 
the  Edinburgh  Evening  Courant,  and  were  here  reprinted,  '  by  the  express  wish  of 
Mrs.  Siddons.'  Ballantyne  (not  D.  Terry,  as  Campbell  thought)  himself  wrote  the 
Courant' 's  dramatic  criticism,  and  was  referred  to  by  the  Shepherd,  in  '  Noctes,  No.  32, 
as  'the  best  theatrical  creetic  in  EmbroV 

9 


130  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

— in  her  farewell  performances  at  Covent  Garden,  Lawrence 
wrote  to  Joseph  Farington,  R.A.,  "  The  Town  is  fashionably 
and  I  had  almost  said  rationally  mad  after  it."  l 

An  actress  whose  physique  had  become  unfit  for  youthful 
parts  might  naturally  decline  on  Volumnia,  but  this  was  not 
the  case  with  Mrs.  Siddons,  for  she  made  her  first  triumph 
in  the  part  at  thirty-three,  when,  complains  Genest,  her 
dissidence  from  Wofifington's  self-denying  practice  of  aging 
her  face  made  her  appear  Coriolanus's  sister. 

The  very  name, '  Volumnia/  seems  to  express  Mrs.  Siddons. 
She  was  the  one  actress  who  can  ever  have  approached  in 
outward  resemblance  to  a  correspondence  with  the  august 
image  used  by  Coriolanus — 

"  My  mother  bows ; 
As  if  Olympus  to  a  molehill  should 
In  supplication  nod." 

Her  noble  form,  with  what  Hazlitt  called  its  '  decided, 
sweeping  majesty,'  seemed  the  natural  mould  for  the  magni- 
tude and  elevation  of  the  sentiments  Volumnia  utters.  She 
did  not  need,  like  Harvard,  to  study  her  attitudes  between 
six  looking-glasses,  it  was  enough  to  feel  the  passion,  and, 
because  she  was  a  sublime  actress,  the  action  followed.  Her 
Roman  matron  was  herself,  and  thus  she  would  have  desired 
to  act  had  the  play  been  reality. 

The  best  description  ever  given  of  an  isolated  piece  of 
acting  relates  to  her  Volumnia,  and,  since  '  there's  none  cares, 
like  a  fellow  of  the  craft,'  it  proceeds,  as  we  might  expect, 
from  an  actor.  Julian  Young  recalled,  as  follows,  Charles 
Young's  impression  of  her  exultant  pantomime,  in  Act  II., 
when  her  son  returns  to  Rome  '  Coriolanus ' : — 

"...  instead  of  dropping  each  foot,  at  equi-distance  .  .  . 
in  cadence  subservient  to  the  orchestra  .  .  .  with  head  erect, 
and  hands  pressed  firmly  to  her  bosom,  as  if  to  repress  by 
manual  force  its  triumphant  swellings,  she  towered  above  all 
around  her,  and  almost  reeled  across  the  stage ;  her  very 
soul,  as  it  were,  dilating  and  rioting  in  its  exultation,  until 
her  action  lost  all  grace,  and,  yet,  became  so  true  to  nature, 

1  Sir  Thomas  Lawrence's  Letter-Bag,  86. 


HER  INTERPRETATION  OF  SHAKESPEARE      131 

so  picturesque,  and  so  descriptive,  that,  pit  and  gallery  sprang 
to  their  feet,  electrified  by  the  transcendent  execution  of  the 
conception." 

Juliet,  on  our  stage,  like  Phedre  in  France,  is  traditionally 
regarded  as  the  touchstone  of  an  actress's  tragic  powers,  and 
yet  how  rarely  has  an  actress  established  her  fame  by  her 
Juliet !  There  was  no  general  enthusiasm  over  the  part  when 
Mrs.  Siddons  first  assumed  it  for  her  benefit  night,  May  nth, 
1789,  and  she  never  repeated  it.  Leigh  Hunt  found  that  she 
was  too  stately  and  self-subdued  for  'the  amatory  pathetic.' 
Any  ascendancy  over  her  of  a  mother  or  a  cackling  nurse 
seemed  preposterous,  and  the  thoughtful  strength  of  her  features 
alone  contradicted  a  passion  'too  rash,  too  unadvis'd,  too 
sudden.'  Compared  with  Shakespeare's,  her  vision  of  love 
was  middle-aged,  it  was  in  tune  with  a  sublimated  version 
of '  John  Anderson,  my  Jo,  John.'  Her  faithful  knight,  Boaden, 
tried  to  champion  her  by  depreciating  Juliet,  whose  ardency 
he  called  "  entirely  without  dignity :  it  springs  up,  like  the 
mushroom,  in  a  night,  and  its  flavour  is  earthy." 

As,  during  the  tragedy's  progress,  the  serious  interest  of 
risk  and  calamity  deepened,  Mrs.  Siddons  responded  to  its 
call.  In  her  forecast  of  the  horrors  awaiting  her  in  the 
Capulet  monument,  she  was,  at  last,  and  then  only,  truly  herself 
— vivid,  terrific,  and  original. 

One  of  the  minor  Shakespearean  queens,  Elizabeth, 
widow  of  Edward  IV,  was  originally  performed  by  her,  on 
February  7th,  1792,  to  her  brother's  Richard  III,  but  there 
was  little  to  be  made  out  of  the  character.  She  could  have 
done  more  with  her  early  part,  Lady  Anne,  or  with  Queen 
Margaret. 

It  is  interesting  to  know  that  Hermione,  first  played  on 
March  25th,  1802,  a  decade  before  her  retirement,  was  the 
last  of  her  new  characters,  whether  in  or  out  of  Shakespeare. 
In  1785,  she  had  written  to  Whalley,  "  I  am  going  to  under- 
take your  adored  Hermione  this  winter.  You  know  I  was 
always  afraid  of  her  ..."  but  the  Hermione  spoken  of  was, 
most  probably,  Hermione  in  Philips's  Distressed  Mother^  which 
she  played  for  her  benefit,  March  4th,  1786. 

As  for  the  greater  Hermione,  she  could  not  have  made  a 


132  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

better  choice  for  her  waning  maturity,  in  1802,  than  this  wife 
and  mother  part,  and  she  was  nobly  imaginative  in  it.  As 
Boaden  rightly  says,  it  would  be  absurd  to  suppose  that 
characters  like  Belvidera  and  Southerne's  Isabella  proved  as 
delightful  to  audiences  in  Mrs.  Siddons's  autumn  as  they  had 
been  in  her  April,  but  her  Constance,  Lady  Macbeth,  Hermione, 
and  Volumnia  were  no  less  beautiful  and  compelling  in  her 
final  season  than  when  first  she  impersonated  them.  In  her 
artistic  career  there  was  no  solution  of  continuity;  only,  her 
favourite  range  of  characters  gradually  settled  among  women 
imagined  by  Shakespeare  as  net  mezzo  del  cammin. 

To  think  of  the  incalculable  extension  of  Shakespeare's 
influence  due  to  Mrs.  Siddons  is  to  be  reminded  of  the 
pretty  lines  M.  Rostand  recited  to  her  dramatic  namesake 
on  December  9th,  1896 — 

"  Tu  sais  bien,  Sarah,  que  quelquefois 

Tu  sens  furtivement  se  poser,  quand  tu  joues, 

Les  levres  de  Shakespeare  aux  bagucs  de  tes  doigts"  1 

1  Cf.  Tennyson,  To  W.  C.  Macready,  1851— 

"  Our  Shakespeare's  bland  and  universal  eye 
Dwells  pleased,  through  twice  a  hundred  years,  on  thee." 


JOHN  PHILIP  KEMBLE 

LITTLE  is  seen  of  Roger  Kemble  after  the  emergence 
of  Mrs.  Siddons  and  John.  A  few  glimpses  given  by 
Boaden  indicate  that  the  patriarch  did  not  lack  what 
Mr.  H.  B.  Irving  (writing  in  the  Fortnightly  Review \  August 
1906)  aptly  termed  the  'rather  Crummies-like  solemnity'  of 
the  entire  family.  In  1788,  'Kemble  Senior'  played,  'very 
well,'  in  The  Miller  of  Mansfield  at  the  Haymarket,  at  the 
benefit  of  his  daughter-in-law,  Mrs.  Stephen  Kemble.  He 
was  sixty-seven,  and  it  was  his  metropolitan  debut,  so 
advertised.  The  fact  that  the  old  man  received  a  cheque  for 
£19,  5s.,  signed  by  Richard  Peake,  the  Drury  Lane  treasurer, 
on  *  N '  account,  and  Genest's  report  of  a  banker's  refusing  him, 
during  the  winter  of  1786,  a  share  in  some  beneficent  fund 
lodged  in  his  hands,  on  the  ground  that  *  he  could  not  con- 
sider the  father  of  Mrs.  Siddons,  who  was  making  so  much 
money,  as  a  fit  object  of  charity/  do  not,  necessarily,  prove 
neglect  on  the  part  of  Roger's  wealthier  children.  York 
Herald  contributes  the  fact  that,  "in  1792,  Arms,  with  the 
crest  of  a  Boar's  head  between  a  branch  of  laurel  and  one 
of  palm  was  granted  to  Roger  Kemble  of  Kentish  Town " 
(cf.  R.  K.'s  designation  in  pedigree,  p.  5).  During  his  last 
years,  Roger  appears  to  have  lived  with  the  John  Kembles,  at 
89  Great  Russell  Street,  and  from  there  he  was  buried.  At  the 
time  of  his  death,  John  was  holidaying  in  Madrid,  whence 
he  wrote  to  Charles : — 

"  Nothing  in  my  opinion  could  be  better  judged  than 
your  interring  my  poor  father  without  the  least  affectation  of 
any  parade,  and  I  agree  with  you  entirely,  that  his  remains 
should  be  protected  by  a  simple  stone;  but  I  beg  that  in 


134  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

the  plain  memorial  inscribed  on  it  his  age  may  be  men- 
tioned. Long  life  implies  virtuous  habits,  and  they  are  real 
honours." 

Creditable  platitudes  came  naturally  to  every  member  of 
the  House  of  Kemble.  With  more  nature,  the  traveller  had 
written,  on  the  previous  day  : — 

"  How  in  vain  have  I  delighted  myself  in  thousands  of 
inconvenient  occurrences  on  this  journey,  with  the  thought  of 
contemplating  my  father's  cautious  incredulity  while  I  related 
them  to  him  !  " 

As  we  have  already  found,  John  Kemble  by  no  means 
sprang  into  his  position  of  being  the  '  top-tragedian '  of  the  day 
without  a  stern  probationary  period.  But,  beyond  and  *  back  of 
the  gentleman's  education  he  had  received  at  Sedgeley  Park 
and  the  Douai  College,  the  young  actor  possessed  ambition, 
ability,  and  will.  On  September  3Oth,  1783,  he  made  his 
debut,  as  Hamlet,  at  Drury  Lane,  thanks  to  Mrs.  Siddons's 
influence,  and  we  read  that,  on  his  appearing,  every  one 
murmured, '  How  very  like  his  sister ! '  To  realise  the  strong 
resemblance,  we  have  but  to  turn  to  Lawrence's  portrait  of 
him,  as  Hamlet,  in  his  fur  and  feathers,  ruminatory,  handling 
Yorick's  skull,  and  poised  (as  a  child  might  think)  on  the 
top  of  a  globe,  like  Moses  on  Pisgah.  Kemble's  height  and 
size,  said  Scott,  reviewing  Boaden's  Life  of  Kemble,  were 
"on  a  scale  suited  for  the  stage,  and  almost  too  large  for  a 
private  apartment."  The  English  Theatre,  on  the  other  hand, 
describing  his  early  performances,  found — in  the  quaint  style 
of  the  period — that  "he  wants  that  fullness  of  chest  and 
abdomen  which  gives  a  finished  appearance." 

Still,  as  in  Henderson's  time,  'Gentleman  Smith'  was  in 
possession  of  the  best  tragedy  parts  at  Drury  Lane,  and 
more  than  two  months  elapsed  before  Kemble  and  Mrs. 
Siddons — in  obedience  to  the  King  and  Queen's  desire — were 
seen  together  in  parts  of  equal  consequence.  Smith's  retire- 
ment in  1788,  synchronising  with  Kemble's  elevation  to  the 
stage  management,  cleared  the  field,  and,  thenceforth,  Kemble 
almost  invariably  supported  his  sister. 

It  might  have  been  imagined  that  she  would  find  it 
insipid  and  difficult  to  act  with  such  a  near  relation,  and 


JOHN  PHILIP  KEMBLE  135 

one  inclines  to  think  that  the  brother  and  sister,  and,  what 
is  commoner,  the  husband  and  wife  combination  produces, 
in  the  audience,  some  diminution  of  illusion,  a  suggestion 
corroborated  by  the  fact  that  few  married  couples  appear 
on  programmes  under  one  surname.  Fanny  Kemble,  who 
constantly  acted  in  tragedies  with  Charles  Kemble,  found  the 
personal  relation  a  painful  element,  the  sight  of  his  anguish 
or  displeasure  invariably  bringing  him  before  her  as  her 
father,  and  not  in  the  part  he  was  playing.  But  the  greatest 
member  of  the  family  so  forgot  everyday  life  in  her  part 
that  she  was  absolutely  unhampered,  and,  during  her  earlier 
and  middle  years  at  Drury  Lane,  she  could  not  have  found 
another  tragic  actor  as  competent  as  John. 

The  members  of  clan  Kemble — who  were  ever  seeking  to 
turn  their  theatre,  whether  Drury  Lane  or  Covent  Garden, 
into  a  family  concern — rarely  permitted  themselves  the  luxury 
of  home  criticism.  Once,  however,  Mrs.  Siddons  (in  1805) 
wrote  of  John's  stage  lovemaking  as  outsiders  spoke  of  it : — 

"  I  do  not  like  to  play  Belvidera  to  John's  Jaffier  so  well  as 
I  shall  when  Charles  has  the  part:  John  is  too  cold — too 
formal,  and  does  not  seem  to  put  himself  into  the  character  : 
his  sensibilities  are  not  as  acute  as  they  ought  to  be  for  the 
part  of  a  lover:  Charles,  in  other  characters  far  inferior  to 
John,  will  play  better  in  Jaffier — I  mean  to  my  liking.  We 
have  rehearsed  it." 

Her  determined  alternative,  not  of  Cooke,  nor  Johnston, 
nor  Brunton,  but  'Charles/  reminds  one,  in  its  spirit,  of 
Stevenson's  Brothers  of  Cauldstaneslap.  They  haed  a  gude 
pride  o'  themsers,  and  the  Kembles  were  like  them.  Mrs. 
Inchbald  somewhere  animadverts  on  the  'too  conscious 
elevation  *  of  the  whole  Kemble  group. 

John  Kemble's  speciality  lay  in  all  that  was  eloquent  and 
grandiloquent  in  tragedy.  He  was  a  fine  actor,  not  a  great 
actor,  less  *  born'  than  his  sister,  more  'made.'  In  1783,  before 
he  played  Hamlet,  he  copied  out  the  part  forty  times;  like 
Mrs.  Siddons,  he  wrote  an  analysis  of  the  character  of  Macbeth 
— Macbeth  Reconsidered  (1786;  enlarged,  in  1817,  into  Macbeth 
and  King  Richard  the  Third] ;  if  ever  he  felt  he  had  played 
beneath  his  powers,  he  would  say,  disgustedly,  "  I  acted  to- 


136  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

night  THIRTY  SHILLINGS  a  week."  By  reason  of  his 
own  stately  cast  of  mind,  he  made  a  superb  Roman,  and, 
though  both  Leigh  Hunt  and  Hazlitt  thought  Penruddock  in 
Cumberland's  The  Wheel  of  Fortune  his  best  impersonation, 
general  tradition  sides  with  Macready  in  associating  him  most 
closely  with  the  high-reared  class  pride  of  Coriolanus.  His 
strength  (like  Zola's  in  fiction)  lay  !in  working  out  a  character 
in  the  grip  of  a  fixed  idea.  Then,  he  would  elaborate  the 
author's  meaning,  leaving  nothing  to  chance,  nothing  to  the 
inspiration  of  the  moment,  till,  sometimes,  the  intensity  of 
the  grapple  set  his  imagination  aglow,  and  he  created  a  part 
as  convincingly  alive  as  Washington  Irving  says  his  Zanga 
was,  in  Young's  Revenge.  "  He  gave,"  said  Hazlitt,  "  the 
deepest  interest  to  the  uninterrupted  progress  of  individual 
feeling."  "  He  is  great,"  said  Scott,  "  in  those  parts  where 
character  is  tinged  by  some  acquired  and  systematic  habit,  like 
stoicism  or  misanthropy." 

To  a  typical  extent,  he  was  a  classic,  as  opposed  to  an 
impressionist,  actor.  Forgetting  Garrick,  he  reverted  to  Quin's 
methods,  exactly  as,  forgetting  him,  Kean  was  to  revert  to 
Garrick's.  Kemble  thought  out  the  flexure  of  every  finger. 
In  his  earnestness,  he  was  humble  enough  to  inquire 
searchingly  of  Mrs.  Inchbald  how  Henderson  had  played  Sir 
Giles  Overreach  in  Massinger's  A  New  Way  to  Pay  Old  Debts. 
".  .  .  I  shall  be  uneasy  if  I  have  not  an  idea  of  his  dress, 
even  to  the  shape  of  his  buckles,  and  what  rings  he  wears  on 
his  hands." 

Except  at  rare  intervals,  Kemble  lacked  power  to  let 
himself  go.  Too  often,  people  could  smell  the  machine  oil. 
In  consequence  of  too  great  solicitude,  his  acting  sometimes 
failed  to  produce  the  effect  intended  ;  "  for  very  love  of  self 
himself  he  slew,"  as,  when,  in  playing  Coriolanus,  he  over- 
laboured the  superciliousness  and  nonchalance  till  Hazlitt  was 
reminded  of  the  unaccountably  abstracted  air,  contracted 
eyebrows,  and  suspended  chin  of  a  person  about  to  sneeze. 

Combined  with  perfect  enunciation,  the  '  weighty  sense,' 
which,  says  Lamb,  Kemble  put  into  every  line  was  in  itself 
an  attraction  to  the  judicious,  while  it  gave  the  unskilful  a 
vague  conviction  of  personal  dignity  in  the  actor.  Kemble 


JOHN  PHILIP  KEMBLE  137 

showed  that  he  believed  in  things  poetic  and  ideal,  and  he 
induced  audiences  to  partake  his  faith  and  taste.  He  may 
possibly  have  owed  some  of  his  solemnity  of  manner  to  his 
priestly  training,  but  his  aims  were  high,  and,  as  an  actor- 
manager,  he,  too,  with  Garrick  and  Macready,  honestly  merited 
Tennyson's  tribute  to  the  three,  that  they 

"made  a  nation  purer  through  their  art." 

Actors,  as  stage  history  so  often  reminds  us,  are  ignorant 
of  their  weak  side.  Kemble  had  a  strong  inclination  to  play 
Charles  Surface.  He  only  gave  Sheridan  the  opportunity  to 
tell  him,  after  he  had  done  so,  that  he  had  '  entirely  executed 
his  design/  A  player  in  whose  acting  there  was,  according 
to  Hazlitt,  '  neither  variableness  nor  shadow  of  turning,'  whose 
pauses  Sheridan  recommended  should  be  filled  up  with  music, 
was  not  likely  to  excel  in  light  comedy,  and  we  may  well 
believe  his  friend,  John  Taylor's,  statement — 

' '  Whene'er  he  tries  the  airy  and  the  gay, 
Judgment,  not  genius,  marks  the  cold  essay." 

In  Kemble's  opinion,  knowledge  and  study,  if  only 
profound  enough,  qualified  their  possessor  equally  for  comedy 
and  tragedy.  Sir  Walter  Scott,  in  a  letter  to  Mrs.  Maclean 
Clephane,  best  summed  up,  for  and  against,  the  art  of  his 
friend,  '  King  John/  as  he  sometimes  called  him,  or  (quoting 
his  own  Claud  Halcro)  *  glorious  John.'  "  He  is,"  wrote  Scott, 
"a  lordly  vessel,  goodly  and  magnificent,  when  going  large 
before  the  wind,  but  wanting  the  facility  to  go  '  ready 
about.' " 

If  Kemble  had  not  been  an  actor,  he  might  have  become 
a  more  prominent  philologist  than  his  nephew  and  namesake, 
Charles's  elder  son.  He  overlaid  several  Shakespearean 
passages  with  ingenious  'readings,'  regarding  the  Tightness 
of  which,  however  fantastic,  he  remained  inflexible.  He  had 
a  liking  for  christening  characters  to  whom  Shakespeare  and 
other  dramatists  had  given  no  individual  names.  He  was 
born  for  those  textual  niceties  which,  as  a  rule,  are  un- 
profitable on  the  stage  because  they  tend  to  subordinate  the 
whole  to  a  part.  Commercially  unprofitable  one,  at  least,  of 


138  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

his  pedantries  was  not.  This  was  the  archaistic  pronunciation 
of '  aches '  as  '  aitches '  in  The  Tempest — 

"Fill  all  thy  bones  with  aches"— 

for  a  zealous  public  was,  Genest  states,  so  intrigut  by  the 
innovation  that  the  piece  lived  several  nights  longer  than 
Thomas  Harris,  then  patentee  of  Covent  Garden,  had 
anticipated,  and  caused  Cooke,  who,  one  night,  played  Prospero, 
to  draw  as  well  as  Kemble,  because  people  wanted  to  hear 
how  he  would  manage  the  critical  lines.  He  left  them  out. 

Mrs.  Siddons's  son  Henry's  daughter,  Mrs.  Mair,  states,  in 
Recollections  of  the  Past,  that  Kemble  would  never  allow  the 
Henry  Siddons  children  to  say  ' funny.' 1  "A  wrong  word, 
or  one  wrongly  pronounced,  affected  him  as  a  wrong  note 
in  music  affects  a  musician."  Every  one  recollects  the  story, 
included  in  Coleridge's  Table  Talk,  of  how  Kemble  was 
discoursing  in  his  measured  manner  after  dinner  at  Lord 
Guildford's,  when  the  servant  announced  his  carriage : — 

"  He  nodded,  and  went  on.  The  announcement  took  place 
twice  afterwards ;  Kemble  each  time  nodding  his  head  a 
little  more  impatiently,  but  still  going  on.  At  last,  and  for 
the  fourth  time,  the  servant  entered,  and  said,  '  Mrs.  Kemble 
says,  sir,  she  has  the  rheumatzj*?,  and  cannot  stay.'  *  Add  ism  \ ' 
dropped  John,  in  a  parenthesis,  and  proceeded  quietly  in  his 
harangue." 

A  list  of  his  linguistic  affectations  is  given  in  the  appendix  to 
Leigh  Hunt's  Essays  on  the  Performers  of  the  London  Theatres. 
He  called  'fastidious/  'fastijjus/  and  '  Aufidius,'  'Aufijjus.'  He 
said  '  To  air  is  human.'  With  him, '  pierces '  became  '  purses,' 
'  virtue '  and  '  merchant/  *  varchue '  and  '  marchant.'  How  he 
justified  some  of  the  pronunciations  he  insisted  on  passes 
understanding.  His  ' Room '  and  '  goold/  however,  were  no 
more  than  the  pronunciation  traditional,  up  till  comparatively 
recently,  in  many  old  English  families.  So  did  Landor 
pronounce  '  Rome '  and  '  gold.1 

In     October,    1788,    Kemble     succeeded     Tom     King    as 

1  John  Kemble  had  no  children.  A  propos,  Emery  thus  criticised  his  acting : 
"  He  has  no  natur  ;  not  a  bit.  But  then  he  never  wur  the  feyther  of  a  child,  and 
that  accounts  for  it." 


JOHN  PHILIP  KEMBLE  139 

Drury  Lane's  Manager,  under  Sheridan  and  his  co-proprietors. 
Sheridan's  co-proprietors  were  sleeping  partners,  and  their 
combined  interest  only  amounted  to  half  the  total.  King 
retired  in  disgust.  He  had  never  been  given  a  free  hand, 
even  so  far  as  to  order  '  a  yard  of  copper  lace '  on  a  costume. 
Kemble  entered  upon  his  new  office  with  enthusiasm.  As 
yet,  he  did  not  know  his  Sheridan. 

While  credit  permitted,  he  seems  to  have  been  empowered 
to  run  the  theatre  according  to  his  views.  In  what  would 
nowadays  be  thought  a  palaeolithic  way,  he  liked  to  see 
classics  picturesquely  mounted,  and,  when  he  played  Brutus 
or  Coriolanus,  he  even  aimed — in  spite  of  skimpy  togas — 
at  something  doing  duty  for  an  'archaeological  revival.'  He 
was,  however  gropingly,  the  forerunner  of  Charles  Kean, 
and  first  of  the  moderns. 

Garrick's  Drury,  architecturally  condemned,  was  pulled 
down  in  1791,  and  Sheridan's  new  theatre,  double  the  size, 
capable  of  holding  361 1  people,  vast,  impracticable,  unfinished, 
was  opened  in  1794.  Shortly  after,  Mrs.  Siddons  described 
the  new  building — Henry  Holland's — as  'a  wilderness  of  a 
place.'  She  was  finding  it  necessary  to  magnify  and  under- 
line gestures,  voice,  and  facial  expression  to  suit  it.  Before 
the  closing  of  the  earlier  house,  Kemble  presented  The 
Tempest,  with,  according  to  contemporary  notions,  'extra- 
ordinary magnificence.' 

Among  serious  critics  there  was  much  head-shaking  over 
Kemble's  zeal  for 

"those  gilt  gauds  men-children  swarm  to  see." 

Boaden  says  the  actors,  as  a  matter  of  course,  foresaw 
that  spectacular  staging  would  subordinate  the  importance 
and  prestige  of  acting.  One  wonders  what  they  would  have 
said  in  a  day  when  Shakespeare  is  deemed  scarcely  pre- 
sentable unless  helped  out  with  lurid  sunsets,  classic 
architecture,  running  waterfalls,  horses,  a  donkey,  or  a  wolf- 
hound, when  in  vain  Mr.  Gordon  Craig  seeks  to  persuade  a 
coarsened  public  that  the  thing  needful  is  not  scenery,  but 
a  scene,  suggestive,  undiverting,  designed,  not  to  '  give  reality ' 
— for  theatrical  illusion  can  only  be  established  through 


140  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

feeling — but  to  spare  long  passages  of  description.  If  we 
could  see  Mrs.  Siddons  acting  in  a  bare  hall,  who  can 
suppose  but  that,  in  three  minutes,  we  should  be  heedless 
of  the  absence  of  'scenery'?  Boaden  unhesitatingly  states — 
to  moderns  the  remark  must  seem  the  acme  of  quaintness 
— that  Kemble  and  his  sister  never  proved  themselves  such 
transcendent  actors  as  when  they  made  good  their  ascendancy 
over  "  accompaniments  that  would  have  rendered  feebler 
merits  contemptible." 

The  Sheridan-Kemble-Siddons  constellation  may  have 
been,  as  was  said,  'the  greatest  variety  of  talent  ever  seen 
combined  into  one  dramatic  company/  but,  like  Lord 
Grenville's  All  the  Talents,  it  did  not  contain  the  elements 
of  permanence.  In  1796,  sickened  with  Sheridan's  non- 
payments and  evasions,  and  the  consequent  exasperation 
and  disorder  behind  the  curtain,  Kemble  threw  up  his 
Managership,  and  was  succeeded  in  it  by  Wroughton,  who, 
in  1798,  on  his  intended  retirement  from  the  stage,  gave 
place  to  James  Aickin.  For  the  1800-1  season,  Kemble 
again  took  up  managerial  duties,  in  the  idea  of  purchasing, 
together  with  Mrs.  Siddons,  into  the  property,  but,  owing 
to  some  uncertainty  in  the  title,  the  negotiations  came  to 
nothing.  Kemble,  instead,  purchased,  in  1802,  a  sixth  share 
(William  Lewis,  the  comedian's)  of  Covent  Garden  Theatre, 
paying,  with  the  help  of  his  friend,  Heathcote,  £10,000 
down  towards  the  £23,000  he  was  to  be  charged  for  it.  He 
took  a  year's  holiday  for  foreign  travel  between  his  Drury 
Lane  period  and  his  new  responsibilities.  At  the  time  of 
his  leaving  Drury  Lane,  his  salary,  as  actor  and  Manager, 
was,  nominally,  £56,  143.  a  week.  At  Covent  Garden,  it 
was,  independently  of  his  proprietary  interest,  £36  a  week. 

Both  Kemble  and  Mrs.  Siddons  now  definitively  quitted 
the  House  of  Garrick,  and,  from  the  autumn  of  1803  onwards, 
made  Covent  Garden  their  habitat,  till  each,  in  turn,  bade 
farewell  to  the  public  from  its  boards.  Kemble's  income  from 
Covent  Garden,  including  his  proprietary  share,  acting,  and 
management,  has  been  estimated  as  £2500  per  annum.  I 
have  not  been  able  to  ascertain  whether  Mrs.  Siddons,  before 
quitting  Drury  Lane,  received  all  her  much-mentioned  arrears 


JOHN  PHILIP  KEMBLE  141 

of  pay  from  Sheridan.  Into  that  second  '  drowning  gulph,' 
Covent  Garden  Theatre,  she  now  put  no  capital,  though, 
when  Kemble  went  into  the  proprietorship,  Mr.  Siddons  was, 
at  first,  mentioned,  as  likely  to  buy  an  additional  share. 

The  curse  of  Sheridan  seemed  to  follow  Kemble  from 
t'other  house,  for,  when,  on  September  2Oth,  1808,  Covent 
Garden  Theatre  became  'well  alight,5  and,  in  under  three 
hours,  the  interior  was  destroyed,  with  all  its  contents, 
including  the  jewels  and  lace — fine,  curious,  unreplaceable — 
which  Mrs.  Siddons  had  been  collecting  for  thirty  years,1 
the  cause  of  the  fire  was  believed  to  have  been  the  smouldering 
wadding  of  a  musket,  let  off  in  Sheridan's  Pizarro.  The  loss 
of  property  was  estimated  at  ;£i  50,000.  Kemble  rebuilt  his 
house  in  less  than  a  year,  the  company  acting  during  the 
interim,  first,  at  the  Opera  House — then  called  'the  King's 
Theatre ' — and,  after,  at  the  Haymarket  Theatre. 

Kemble  made  a  justifiable  choice  when  he  married  the 
widow  Brereton,  nee  Priscilla  Hopkins.  She  was  an  active, 
garrulous  little  woman — whose  '  Priscilla '  her  husband  shortened 
into  'Pop,'  and  the  late  Mrs.  Mair  remembered  that,  in  1822, 
the  ever  laborious  John  could  not  start  on  a  short  Italian  tour 
without  studying  grammar,  dictionary,  Dante,  and  Tasso 
beforehand,  with  the  result  that  grammarless  '  Pop '  made 
the  waiters  understand  when  he  could  do  nothing. 

Aunt  John,  as  the  younger  generation  called  her,  was 
addicted  to  high  society,  and  advantageously  elated  in  it. 
While  Kemble  was  abroad,  during  the  hiatus  between  Drury 
Lane  and  Covent  Garden  (1802-3),  she  wrote  from  Lord 
Abercorn's,  Stanmore  Priory,  to  her  husband's  old  'flirt/ 
Mrs.  Inchbald : — 

"  Our  Friday  Evening  was  most  splendid  and  to  me  in 
every  way  triumphant  .  .  .  the  Prince  [of  Wales]  .  .  .  would  not 
allow  me  to  stand  and  talked  in  the  most  familiar  manner 
and  the  most  friendly  for  an  Hour  all  this  in  presence  of 
my  friend  Sheridan.  Sheridan  was  very  civil,  and  so  was  I.  ... 

1  Among  the  lace  was  a  point  veil,  nearly  five  yards  long,  that  had  been,  Mrs. 
Siddons  told  Lady  Harcourt,  *  a  toilette  of  the  poor  Queen  of  France  and  worth 
over  a  thousand  pounds,  but  that's  the  least  regret,  it  was  so  interesting  ! ' — Undated 
letter,  from  Mrs.  Siddons  to  Lady  Harcourt,  exhibited  in  the  Guelph  Exhibition. 


142  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

Sheridan  is  little-minded  enough  to  be  vexed  at  seeing  any 
of  his  performers  admitted  into  the  society  he  lives  with.  .  .  . 
I  think  the  Houses  I  have  been  in  during  my  Husband's 
absence  has  been  most  creditable  and  serviceable  to  him  as 
he  has  been  constantly  kept  before  the  eyes  of  the  great  world, 
passages  in  his  Letters  talked  of,  etc."  l 

The  Kembles  were  even  more  intimate  than  Mrs.  Siddons 
with  the  Greatheeds.  In  the  library  at  Guy's  Cliffe  is  a 
portrait  of  Mrs.  Kemble,  representing  a  buxom,  decolletee 
lady  in  brown  gown  and  scarlet  turban.  It  was  painted  by 
the  son  of  the  house,  Bertie  (ll),  whose  own  head — by  himself 
— artistic,  ardent-looking,  with  abundant  hair,  high  collar, 
and  voluminous  necktie,  hangs  in  the  same  room. 

Like  Mrs.  Siddons,  '  Coriolanus,'  in  private  life,  could  not 
always  forget  he  was  off  the  stage.  He,  too,  had  the  trick  of 
talking  in  blank  verse,  and  the  late  Rev.  C.  E.  Bodham  Donne, 
whose  first  wife  was  Kemble's  great-niece,  used  to  tell  a  story 
of  the  actor's  entering  an  umbrella-shop,  picking  out  a  walking- 
stick,  and  saying  to  the  shopman — 

"  This  likes  me  well.     The  cost  ?  the  cost  ?  " 

If,  away  from  the  theatre,  he  was  not  guiltless  of  posing 
— what  tragedy  actor  ever  was? — his  manner  was  by  no 
means  all  stage  buckram.  He  was  a  kind,  worthy,  simple- 
hearted  man,  and  he  lived  (to  use  Lamb's  phrase  concerning 
him)  in  familiar  habits  with  half  the  well-known  intellects  of 
his  day.  The  idea  of  paying  his  footing,  a  la  Garrick,  with 
'  turns,'  recitations,  or  any  other  parlour  tricks,  was  abhorrent 
to  him.  Where  he  went,  he  went  as  a  gentleman  like  the 
others,  never  as  the  actor,  off  duty,  but  glad  to  be  amusing. 
Lady  Morgan's  Book  of  the  Boudoir  gives  a  droll  glimpse  of 
him  at  a  party  at  Lady  Cork's  in  1810.  'The  Wild  Irish 
Girl,'  Sydney  Owenson  —  she  did  not  marry  Sir  Charles 
Morgan  till  1812 — was  the  new  pet  lioness.  Kemble  arrived 
when  people  were  supping : — 

"  Mr.  Kemble  was  evidently  much  pre-occupied  and  a 
little  exalted.  .  .  .  He  was  seated  vis-a-vis,  and  had  repeatedly 
stretched  his  arm  across  the  table  for  the  purpose,  as  I 

1  The  original  letter,  from  which  I  quote,  is  in  the  Forster  Collection,  Victoria 
and  Albert  Museum. 


JOHN  PHILIP  KEMBLE  143 

supposed,  of  helping  himself  to  some  boar's  head  in  jelly. 
Alas  !  .  .  .  my  head  happened  to  be  the  object  which  fixed 
his  attention,  which,  being  a  true  Irish  cathah  head,  dark, 
cropped,  and  curly,  struck  him  as  a  particularly  well 
organized  Brutus,  and  better  than  any  in  his  repertoire  of 
theatrical  perukes.  Succeeding  at  last  in  his  feline  and  fixed 
purpose,  he  actually  struck  his  claws  in  my  locks,  and, 
addressing  me  in  the  deepest  sepulchral  tones,  asked,  'Little 
girl,  where  did  you  buy  your  wig  ? ' ' 

The  best  thing  Kemble  ever  said  was  his  remark  on 
Zoffany's  picture  of  Garrick  and  Mrs.  Pritchard  in  Macbeth 
that  it  really  represented  the  butler  and  housekeeper  quarrel- 
ling over  the  carving-knives.  Again,  he  was  funny — to  use 
the  word  he  prohibited — when  he  prefaced  a  comic  song  by 
saying  it  was  a  favourite  with  one  of  the  first  comic  singers 
of  the  day,  Mrs.  Siddons.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  Mrs.  Siddons 
(whom  her  official  biographer  terms  'a  passable  vocalist') 
would  sometimes  indulge  a  select  circle  with  Billy  Taylor, 
rendered  in  a  style  of  exaggerated  solemnity. 

In  convivial  hours,  which,  fortunately,  did  not  occur 
most  nights,  for  he  observed  the  Baron  of  Bradwardine's 
distinction  between  ebrius  and  ebriosus,  Kemble  drank, 
solemnly,  as  became  an  earnest  tragedian,  but  to  a  degree 
that  sometimes  resulted  in  his  slipping  under  the  table. 
His  prime  of  life  was  circ.  1800,  and  he  might  have  urged 
the  plea  of  the  contemporary  Orkney  clergyman,  called  to 
reply  to  a  charge  of  inebriety,  "Reverend  Moderator,  I  do 
drink,  as  other  gentlemen  do."  Campbell  told  a  story  of 
how,  in  Paris,  he  and  Kemble,  returning  from  too  liberal  an 
entertainment  at  Mme  de  StaeTs,  fell  discussing,  in  the 
carriage,  whether  Talma,  being  an  actor,  was  as  well  worth 
meeting  as  an  author.  The  argument  grew  personal,  and] 
finally,  Campbell,  in  a  rage,  got  out,  and  walked  home.  Next 
morning,  'with  a  faint  recollection  of  what  had  happened/  he 
called  on  the  festive  John,  whom  he  found  just  out  of  bed. 
"Ah,  my  dear  friend,  I  was  just  sitting  down  to  ask  you 
to  dine  with  me."  "  To  meet  Talma,  of  course  ? "  "  Come 
and  see." 

Scott  loved  Kemble  for  several  reasons ;  primarily,  because 


144  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

he  was  'a  virtuoso  like  himself/  and,  secondarily,  because  he 
was  an  imaginative  and  exceptionally  cultured  actor,  and  Scott 
forgathered  with  actors  whenever  he  had  the  chance.  It  was 
at  a  dinner  to  William  Murray,  the  actor  (Mrs.  Henry  Siddons's 
brother),  in  1 827,  that  he  first  overtly  acknowledged  the  author- 
ship of  the  Waverley  Novels. 

When  staying  at  Ashestiel,  Kemble  was  Scott's  enfant  gate. 
Himself  drinking  '  claret  by  the  pail-ful,'  he  kept  his  host  up  to 
an  unconscionable  hour  every  night,  and,  in  1817,  not  only  made 
Scott  write  noble  verses  for  his  Edinburgh  farewell,  but  actually 
criticised  and  corrected  them  till  he  got  them  quite  to  his  mind. 
It  may  be  remembered  (v.  p.  33)  that,  in  the  early  days,  when 
Mr.  Inchbald  rode  on  horseback,  Mr.  Kemble  was  taken  into 
the  chaise  by  the  ladies,  and,  throughout  his  life,  his  horseman- 
ship left  much  to  be  desired.  It  was  by  reason  of  its  deficiency 
that,  in  the  morning,  after  his  enforcedly  deep  potations  of  the 
vigil,  Scott  'socked  it  home'  on  his  guest  as  soon  as  the 
celebrated  cavalcade,  led  by  Maida,  started  for  the  day's  ad- 
ventures. Scott,  says  his  son-in-law,  used  to  chuckle,  'with 
particular  glee/  over  the  recollection  of  how,  one  day,  on  an 
excursion  to  the  vale  of  Ettrick,  the  riders,  of  whom  Kemble 
was  one,  were  pursued  by  a  bull.  "  Come,  King  John/'  said 
the  Laird,  "  we  must  even  take  the  water,"  whereat  he  and  his 
daughter  plunged  into  the  stream.  But  Ettrick  happened  to 
be  full  and  turbid,  and  '  King  John/  not  liking  the  prospect, 
halted  on  the  bank,  and,  in  his  solemn  manner,  exclaimed — 

"The  flood  is  angry,  Sheriff, 
Methinks  I'll  get  me  up  into  a  tree." 

Kemble's  farewell  performances,  in  1817  —  in  March,  in 
Edinburgh ;  in  June,  in  London — were  attended  by  demonstra- 
tions of  his  popularity.  He  was  only  sixty,  but  gout  and 
increasing  asthma  were  serious  warnings,  and,  equally  with  his 
sister,  he  was  resolved  not  to  outact  his  popularity.  When,  on 
June  5th,  he  played  Macbeth  for  the  last  time  (with  Mrs.  Siddons, 
herself  retired  five  years,  as  his  Lady  Macbeth),  Charles 
Kemble,  at  the  close,  "  received  him  in  his  arms,  and  laid  him 
gently  on  the  ground,  his  physical  powers  being  unequal  to 
further  effort."  His  final  London  appearance  was  in  Coriolanus> 


MRS.  SIDDONS'S  ONLY  PORTRAIT  AS  LADY  MACBETH 


JOHN  PHILIP  KEMBLE  145 

on  June  23rd.  Talma  and  Tieck  were  present  at  this  historic 
leave-taking,  and  the  latter  described  it  in  Dramaturgische 
Blatter.  Every  passage  of  the  play  that  could  be  applied  to 
the  circumstances  of  the  evening  was  seized  by  the  audience. 
Four  evenings  later,  a  public  dinner,  presided  over  by  Vassall 
Holland,  'nephew  of  Fox,  and  friend  of  Grey,'  was  given  in 
Kemble's  honour,  and,  for  the  occasion,  Campbell  composed 
the  well-known  '  Ode ' — a  laudation  of  the  actor  and  his  art — 
intended  for  Charles  Young  to  recite  after  dinner.  Since 
Shakespeare's  sonnets,  nothing  more  sympathetic  has  been 
written  about  a  player  than  the  second  verse  of  this  poem. 

Mrs.  Siddons  thought  an  unnecessary  amount  of  fuss  was 
being  made  over  her  brother's  withdrawal — considerably  more 
than  had  been  made  over  hers.  "  Well,  perhaps,  in  the  next 
world  women  will  be  more  valued  than  they  are  in  this,"  she 
sighed  to  '  Memory '  Rogers. 

Kemble's  diminished  income  and  what  he  called  his  '  crazy 
constitution'  alike  suggesting  residence  abroad,  he  and  Mrs. 
Kemble  settled  for  three  years  at  Toulouse.  Later,  and  after 
a  short  intervening  visit  to  London,  they  took  what  one  of  the 
newspapers  termed  a  '  Helvetic  hermitage/  on  '  the  lake  of 
Lausanne,'  and  there,  on  February  26th,  1823,  the  final  call  came, 
in  the  form  of  apoplexy,  to  John  Kemble.  He  was  '  blooded ' — 
in  both  arms — but  nothing  could  save  him.  "  It  is  impossible 
to  describe  how  he  was  esteem'd  in  this  place,"  wrote  Mrs. 
Kemble,  from  Lausanne,  on  March  24th,  to  Lawrence.  The 
actor  was  interred  where  he  died.  His  statue  (in  the  guise  of 
Addison's  Cato),  completed  by  Hinchliff,  but  commenced  by 
Flaxman,  stands  *  in  the  glorious  glooms  of  Westminster/ 
Originally  placed  in  the  North  Transept,  it  was  removed,  in 
1865,  to  its  more  congenial  present  position,  near  Campbell's 
statue  of  Mrs.  Siddons,  in  St.  Andrew's  Chapel. 

Kemble's  widow  settled,  first,  at  Heath  Farm,  a  house  of 
Lord  Essex's,  close  to  Cassiobury  Park,  and,  later,  near  Guy's 
Cliffe,  at  Leamington.1  To  Fanny  Kemble's  fine-pointed  pen 
we  owe  some  hints  as  to  her  ways  at  the  former  residence, 
which  the  letter  from  Stanmore,  quoted  above,  helps  us  to 
appreciate.  To  her  Aunt  John,  who  was  '  not  at  all  superficially 

1  At  both  places,  Mrs.  Siddons,  and  her  daughter,  Cecilia,  used  to  stay  with  her. 
JO 


146  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

a  vulgar  woman/   'gentility   and  propriety,'  says  Mrs.  Fanny 
Kemble,  *  were  the  breath  of  life.' 

When  her  own  hour  struck — she  outlived  her  husband 
twenty-two  years — Priscilla  Kemble  was  buried  in  the  family 
vault  of  the  Greatheeds  and  the  Percys. 


XI 
OTHER  BROTHERS  AND  SISTERS 

AS  a  rule,  the  Kembles  were  unusually  slender  in  youth,  and 
unusually  stout  in  later  life.  Mrs.  Siddons's  second 
brother,  Stephen  Kemble,  alone,  seems  to  have  begun 
badly,  if  there  be  any  literal  truth  in  the  legend  that,  in  1783, 
he  being  twenty-five,  Covent  Garden,  desirous  of  engaging  '  the 
great  Mr.  Kemble '  from  Dublin,  got  hold  of  Stephen  from  Capel 
Street,  because  he  was  so  much  bigger  than  his  brother,  John, 
at  Smock  Alley.  In  face,  a  Kemble,  without  the  Kemble 
hauteur^  Stephen,  on  probation,  'discharged  the  character'  of 
Othello,  but,  says  Boaden,  with  'nothing  of  the  subtle  and 
discriminating  character  of  his  family.'  Nature  had  been  cruel 
in  loading  him  with  an  excess  of  adipose  tissue,  but  he  ought 
not  to  have  played  Hamlet  when  he  weighed  eighteen  stone, 
and  possessed  no  qualification  for  the  prince  beyond  being  '  fat, 
and  scant  of  breath.'  A  little  later,  and  there  were  but  two 
parts  performable  by  him,  Henry  VIII  and  FalstafT.  The  second 
he  is  celebrated  for  having  played — not  wittily,  nor  drolly,  but 
— without  padding.  John  Taylor,  who  was  his  brother-in-law, 
alleges,  however,  that  he  supported  the  part  'with  a  flowing, 
manly  humour,'  and  was,  generally,  anything  but  contemptible 
in  characters  'of  an  open,  blunt  nature,  and  requiring  a 
vehement  expression  of  justice  and  integrity.' 

Stephen  married  the  Desdemona  of  his  London  debut, 
Elizabeth  Satchell.  She  was  a  delightful  actress,  the  one 
perfect  Beggar's  Opera  Polly  since  Lavinia  Fenton  became 
Duchess  of  Bolton.  What  Mrs.  Stephen  was  on  the  stage — 
'  immeasurably  far  from  vulgarity,'  yet  evincing  *  nothing  of  the 
world's  refinement' — she  appears  to  have  been  in  life.  As 

a  player,  she  was  as  superior  to  her  husband  as,  in  a  higher 

147 


148  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

degree,  her  sister-in-law,  Mrs.  Siddons,  was  to  hers.  But  she 
faithfully  appeared  with  him,  and,  though  in  demand  as  he 
never  was,  left  London  with  him,  when  he,  periodically,  was 
'sent  down.' 

Stephen's  figure  and  want  of  art  suggested  Managership  as 
a  likelier  walk  than  acting.  Early  in  1792,  he  took  the 
Edinburgh  Theatre  Royal,  but  litigation  with  the  previous 
Manager,  Jackson,  and,  simultaneously,  with  Mrs.  Esten,  his 
competitor  for  the  lesseeship,  drove  him  to  another  theatre  in 
Edinburgh,  where,  in  less  than  a  month,  Mrs.  Esten,  through 
her  influence  over  the  Duke  of  Hamilton  (o  mores  /)  caused  his 
performances  to  be  prohibited.  A  year  later,  Stephen  got  the 
better  of  the  lady,  returned  to  the  Theatre  Royal,  and,  by  dint 
of  engaging  his  distinguished  London  relatives,  and  keeping 
himself  in  the  background,  achieved  a  success,  which 
diminished  towards  1800,  at  which  date  he  left  Edinburgh. 
During  1818-19,  he  was  Manager  at  Drury  Lane,  and  there 
introduced  his  son,  Henry  Stephen  Kemble,  an  actor,  who,  it 
was  said,  possessed  the  strongest  lungs  and  weakest  judgment 
of  any  known  performer.  Stephen  Kemble  withdrew  from 
active  service  shortly  before  his  death,  which  took  place  on 
June  5th,  1822,  at  Durham.  He  was  buried  in  Durham 
Cathedral.  Of  his  daughter,  Frances,  sometime  an  actress, 
who  married  Robert  Arkwright,  a  captain  in  a  militia 
regiment  and  a  grandson  of  Sir  Richard  Arkwright,  we  get 
a  picturesque  glimpse  in  Payne  Collier's  An  Old  Man's 
Diary. 

It  seems  strange  that  Charles  Kemble,  the  brother  of  John 
and  of  Mrs.  Siddons,  should  have  been  alive  in  1854,  till  we 
remember  that  he  was  eighteen  years  younger  than  the  former, 
and  twenty  years  younger  than  the  latter.  On  the  day  he  was 
born,  he  became  uncle  to  Mrs.  Siddons's  year-old  elder  son, 
Henry,  to  whose  son,  also  a  Henry  Siddons,  Charles's  daughter, 
Fanny,  nearly  became  engaged.  Like  other  uncles  who  are  of 
an  age  to  be  their  nephews  and  nieces'  cousins,  Charles  Kemble 
was  never,  except  sportively,  'Uncle  Charles'  to  the  young 
Siddonses.  It  was  '  My  Uncle  John,  and  my  Mother,  and 
Charles.' 

Charles  Kemble  started  life  as  a  clerk  in  the  Post  Office,  but 


OTHER  BROTHERS  AND  SISTERS  149 

gave  up  his  berth  a  year  after  he  secured  it,  and  went  straight 
to  the  stage.  After  a  two  years'  novitiate  in  the  provinces, 
he  first  played  with  his  brother  and  sister  at  the  opening  of 
Sheridan's  new  Drury  Lane,  April  2ist,  1794.  He  was  Malcolm 
to  their  Macbeth  and  Lady  Macbeth.  Like  them,  he  proved  an 
actor  of  gradual  development,  though  always  weaker  than  they. 
But  he  was  distinguished,  invulnerably  a  gentleman,  the  most 
chivalrous  of  stage  lovers.  His  delivery  must  have  been  de- 
lightful. Westland  Marston  said  of  his  Hamlet,  "  I  had  never 
imagined  there  could  be  so  much  charm  in  words  as  mere 
sounds."  Playing  every  part,  even  FalstafFs,  without  the  least 
'charging' — in  completely  civilised  taste — he  made  an  ideal 
Cassio,  Faulconbridge,  Richmond,  Laertes,  Petruchio,  Edgar, 
and  the  very  Mercutio  Shakespeare  drew.  Macready's  remark 
that  he  was  a  first-rate  actor  in  second-rate  parts  is  corroborated 
by  Sir  Theodore  Martin.1 

There  had  been  gossip  as  to  John  Kemble  never  encouraging 
a  brother  near  the  throne,  in  plays  containing  male  parts  of 
equal  consequence,  but  when,  in  1820,  during  his  retired  years, 
his  Covent  Garden  partner,  Harris,  the  chief  proprietor,  died, 
he  showed  a  weightier  generosity  in  assigning  to  '  Mr.  Charles ' 
his  sixth  share  of  the  Covent  Garden  property  in  jabsolute  fee. 
The  theatre,  still  embarrassed  by  its  1809  building  debt,  was 
not  doing  well,  but  Charles,  naturally,  believed  prosperity 
recoverable.  The  hope  proved  unjustified,  and  the  expenses 
of  the  huge  theatre  well-nigh  crushed  the  second  Kemble  Atlas 
burdened  with  sustaining  them. 

Charles's  wife,  born  Maria  Teresa  de  Camp,  a  Viennese 
dancer,  a  capable  actress,  and  a  minor  playwright,  might  have 
been  'own  sister'  to  another  Viennese  dancer,  Eva  Violette, 
afterwards  Mrs.  Garrick,  in  that,  though  sharper  tempered,  she 
was  equally  virtuous  and  equally  vivacious,  while  history 
associates  both  —  mysteriously  —  with  the  Empress  Maria 
Teresa.  Mrs.  Charles  Kemble  retired  from  the  stage  in  1819, 
twelve  years  after  marriage. 

Of  the  Charles  Kembles'  four  children,  the  eldest,  John 
Mitchell  Kemble,  grew  up  to  be  Examiner  of  Plays  and  the 
erudite  author  of  The  Saxons  in  England.  To  him,  Tennyson, 

1  Monographs ;  149,  1906. 


ISO  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

in  their  Cambridge  days,  addressed  the  sonnet,  To  J.  M.  K.> '  in 
itself,  a  diploma,'  said  Julian  Young. 

When,  in  1829,  Charles  Kemble's  Management  of  Covent 
Garden  had  brought  him  to  the  verge  of  bankruptcy,  his  elder 
daughter,  Fanny,  aged  twenty,  was  the  Iphigeneia  who  came 
forward  to  save  her  father's  credit.  Sir  Thomas  Lawrence,  so 
well  qualified  to  pronounce,  and  claiming  '  almost  a  Father's 
interest  for  her,'  said  she  had  *  eyes  and  hair  like  Mrs.  Siddons  in 
her  finest  time,'  that  her  voice  was  '  at  once  sweet  and  powerful/ 
and  that  she  was  '  blessed  with  a  clear  Kemble  understanding.' 
Still,  none  but  a  few  enthusiasts  maintained  that  the  undoubtedly 
gifted  girl  had  caught  her  aunt's  mantle.  It  was  no  small  thing 
that,  at  the  close  of  her  first  season,  Charles  Kemble  was  able 
to  pay  off  £  1 3,000  of  debt. 

After  three  successive  seasons,  Fanny  went  with  her  father 
on  tour  to  America,  and  there  married  Mr.  Pierce  Butler,  of 
Philadelphia,  a  Southern  planter.  Her  brief  return,  in  1847,  to 
the  London  stage,  is  a  negligible  fact  in  dramatic  history.  To 
the  first  instalment  of  her  autobiography,  Record  of  a  Girlhood — 
the  best  work  of  her  life — a  great  many  persons  have  owed  an 
acquaintance  they  might  never  otherwise  have  gained  with  the 
outlook  and  family  life  of  players  of  high  character. 

Charles  Kemble's  younger  daughter,  Adelaide,  so  pro- 
foundly admired  by  Edward  Fitzgerald,  Lord  Leighton,  and 
Henry  Greville,  was  a  singer  of  rare  dramatic  power.  She 
gave  up  her  profession  at  the  end  of  1842 — during  her  second 
Covent  Garden  season — to  become  the  wife  of  Mr.  Edward 
John  Sartoris.  In  later  life,  she  published  a  readable  book 
called  A  Week  in  a  French  Country  House,  and  two  other 
volumes  of  stories.  That  she  was  an  impressive  creature 
Lady  Ritchie's  two  Prefaces  to  the  1902  edition  of  A  Week 
in  a  French  Country  House  would,  alone,  demonstrate.  Her 
portrait,  prefixed  to  the  same  edition,  shows  the  persistence 
of  the  Kemble  profile. 

The  Charles  Kembles'  younger  son,  Henry,  went  into  the 
Army,  and  was  the  father  of  a  sound  actor,  recently  dead, 
Henry  Kemble,  well  remembered  in  The  Man  from  Blankley's. 

Mrs.  Siddons's  sisters,  Frances  and  Elizabeth,  appeared  in 
London  before  her  brothers.  Frances  made  her  first  appear- 


OTHER  BROTHERS  AND  SISTERS  151 

ance,  as  Alicia,  in  Jane  Shore,  on  January  6th,  1783,  whereupon 
Sophy  Weston  wrote  to  Dr.  Whalley,  "  How  I  rejoice  in  our 
divine  Melpomene's  amazing  popularity !  It  is  feared  she 
will  hurt  herself  by  introducing  a  sister  who  is  not  at  all 
approved."  On  the  following  March  1st,  we  find  Elizabeth 
Kemble  making  a  second l  appearance — as  Portia. 

Mrs.  Siddons  could  obtain  her  sisters  engagements  and 
some  good  parts,  but  she  could  not  make  them  actresses. 
They  were  ill-advised  to  come  to  London.  For  the  public, 
they  were  too  like  herself — but  '  as  moonlight  unto  sunlight.' 
The  timbre  of  their  voices,  says  Boaden,  so  closely  resembled 
Mrs.  Siddons's  as  to  vex  and  weary  an  audience,  hearing 
either  of  them  in  a  play  with  her.  From  all  other  players 
and  their  supporters  the  two  young  women  had  nothing  to 
expect  but  hostility.  Here  were  Sarah,  Frances,  Elizabeth — • 
and  John  and  Stephen  were  expected !  The  then  very 
narrow  theatrical  area  was  threatened  with  a  Kemble  in- 
undation But  the  Miss  Kembles'  worst  hindrance,  as  has 
been  said,  was  their  lack  of  dramatic  power.  It  was  in  vain 
that  Frances  attended  Thomas  Sheridan's  elocution  lectures 
in  Hickford's  Great  Room  in  Brewer  Street.  The  kindest 
criticism  on  her  was  that  her  diffidence  obscured  her  talents. 
If  formed  by  nature  for  anything  histrionic,  it  was  to  play 
heroine's  confidante.  She  was,  no  doubt,  feminine  and 
pleasing,  and,  certainly,  the  immortal  half-length  of  her 
Reynolds  painted,  and  John  Jones  engraved,  represents  a 
young  lady  with  whom  any  man  might,  without  reproach, 
fall  in  love. 

That  acrimonious  outlaw,  George  (or  'Shakespeare ')  Steevens, 
did  fall  a  little  in  love  with  her,  but  John  Kemble  and 
Mrs.  Siddons  made  it  no  secret  that  his  attentions  were 
unacceptable,  and,  in  the  fulness  of  time,  another  Shakespearean 
scholar  '  came  along,'  in  the  shape  of  Mr.  Francis  Twiss,  with 
more  solid  proposals.  A  'thin  Dr.  Johnson  without  his  hard 
words,'  Twiss  was  a  man  of  as  steady  character  as  the  Kembles 
themselves,  and  that  straight  and  honest  personality,  Mrs. 
Inchbald,  described  him  as  one  ' whose  integrity  nothing  could 
warp.'  He  had  been  credited  with  cherishing  'a  hopeless 
1  No  record  of  the  date  of  the  first  seems  to  have  survived. 


152  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

passion  for  Mrs.  Siddons,'  but,  whether  he  had  or  not,  on 
May  ist,  1786,  he  led  to  the  altar  her  'soft  and  mitigated 
likeness.'  I  Francis  take  thee  Frances. 

Mrs.  Siddons  to  Whalley,  August  nth,  1786:  "Yes,  my 
sister  is  married,  and  I  have  lost  one  of  the  sweetest  com- 
panions in  the  world.  .  .  .  She  has  married  a  most  respectable 
man,  though  of  but  small  fortune,  and  I  thank  God  that  she 
is  off  the  stage."  Six  or  seven  weeks  later :  "  Mrs.  Twiss  will 
present  us  with  a  new  relation  towards  February." 

The  fortune,  as  judicious  Mrs.  Siddons  had  observed,  was 
small,  and  the  ' new  relation '  (Horace  Twiss)  was  shortly 
followed  by  four  others.  From  1807  onwards,  Mrs.  Twiss, 
assisted  by  her  husband  and  daughters,  kept  a  fashionable 
parlour-boarders'  school  in  Bath.  The  terms  were  high — a 
hundred  guineas,  with  '  Entrance  five  guineas,'  but,  on  the 
other  hand,  holidays  were  few — ( in  each  year  one  vacation 
only,  which  will  last  six  weeks.'1  We  may  picture  a  school 
somewhat  on  the  lines  of  the  Lambs'  Mrs.  Leicester's,  where 
little  Miss  Manners,  aged  seven,  inquires  of  the  other  infants, 
"  Pray,  ladies,  are  not  equipages  carriages  ? "  One  of  the 
Prince  Regent's  nine  adopted  children,  the  only  girl,  was  at 
Mrs.  Twiss's.  "  Aunt  Twiss's  school  participated  in  the 
favour  which  everything  even  remotely  associated  with  Mrs. 
Siddons  received  from  the  public,"  remarks  Fanny  Kemble. 

Horace  Twiss's  juvenile  journal  is  lying  before  me.  A 
true  boy  speaks  in  the  following  engaging  fragment : — 

"Journal  Friday  I7th  July  1801. — H.  Twiss  born  February 
28th  1787,  now  aged  14  years,  4  months,  19  days.  Up 
too  late:  got  first  in  Italian:  whipp'd  up  my  breakfast  quick 
for  fear  of  my  Father.  Dined  with  G.  Siddons  [Mrs.  Siddons's 
younger  son,  set  sixteen].  Reconciled  him  to  Miss  Mary 
Godfrey.  Stole  Miss  Squire's  book,  and  returned  it.  Father 
gave  me  sixpence.  P.S.  Quarrelled  with  Julia  Willis — N.B. 
The  dinner  was  Calfs  head,  roast  mutton,  potatoes,  and 
currant-tart — 

"Saturday,  July  i8th  1801. — My  Father  not  well:  gave  us 
a  holiday.  Walk'd  with  George  Siddons  to  Mr.  Wroughton's. 

1  I  quote  from  the  seminary's  prospectus,  as  given  by  Mr.  Fitzgerald,  The 
fCembles,  i.  231-32. 


OTHER  BROTHERS  AND  SISTERS  153 

Call'd  on  Ma'am  Stratt.  G.  Siddons  din'd  with  us.  Drank 
tea  with  the  Miss  green  Godfreys.  N.B.  Everybody  had  tart 
at  dinner  but  me.  P.S.  Dinner  was  Salmon,  roast  veal,  roast 
potatoes,  and  currant-tart,  etc.  etc." 

In  spite  of  his  abstention  from  currant- tart,  the  boy  grew 
up  to  originate  the  Times  summaries  of  Parliamentary  debates, 
and  to  write  Lord  Eldon's  biography,  to  become  an  M.P.  and 
the  vice-chancellor  of  the  Duchy  of  Lancaster,  and  to  have 
his  mots  quoted  throughout  London.  He  composed  Mrs. 
Siddons's  farewell  address,  he  assisted  when  she  gave  her 
readings,  and  he  was  one  of  the  executors  of  her  will. 

It  is  a  melancholy  fact  that  human  weakness  was  stronger 
than  the  much-remarked  family  solidarity  of  the  Kembles. 
"  Alas ! "  said  Mrs.  Siddons,  in  the  evening  of  her  life,  to 
Rogers,  "  after  I  became  celebrated,  none  of  my  sisters  loved 
me  as  they  did  before  !  " 

Like  Frances,  Elizabeth  Kemble  had  been  apprenticed  to 
a  milliner,  not  bred  to  the  stage.  But  the  call  of  the  blood 
prevailed,  and,  in  her  case,  a  most  genuine  love  of  acting.  Old 
and  stout  and  married,  she  still  could  tell  Macready  that '  when 
on  the  stage,  she  felt  like  a  being  of  another  world.' 

All  the  same,  during  her  two  or  three  seasons  at  Drury 
Lane,  she  was  usually  untroubled  by  the  call-boy,  as  some  one 
phrased  it.  In  1785,  she  married  a  godson  of  the  Young 
Chevalier,  Charles  Edward  Whitelock,  dentist  and  actor,  of 
Whitelock  and  Austin's  north  of  England  circuit,  and  went 
with  him,  in  1793,  to  America,  where  they  played  in  Wignell's 
company.  Mrs.  Whitelock  was  '  for  a  time  the  leading  tragic 
actress  of  America/  says  Mr.  Brander  Matthews.  After  her 
return,  in  1807,  to  England,  at  the  age  of  forty-six,  she  was 
unsuccessful  at  Drury  Lane.  She  had  become  a  lady  of 
ample  and  globular  form,  and,  in  London,  tragedy  (to  her 
astonishment)  had  no  further  use  for  her.  She  settled,  with 
her  husband,  in  Newcastle,  where  they  were  highly  respected, 
and  in  181 1  or  1812,  she  was  acting  there  for  the  elder  Macready. 
Mrs.  Siddons,  consistently  couleur  de  rose  when  speaking  of 
any  Kemble  to  an  outsider,  writes  thus,  concerning  Mrs. 
Whitelock,  to  James  Ballantyne,  in  a  letter  (from  '  Leeds, 
July  5th,  1807')  preserved  in  the  Morrison  Collection: — 


154  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

"  She  is  a  noble,  glorious  creature,  very  wild  and  eccentric, 
not  so  old  as  myself  by  six  years,  not  so  tall,  not  so  handsome, 
but  in  all  else  my  equal,  if  not  superior.  I  have  known 
nothing  of  her  from  my  childhood  till  now." 

At  a  later  date,  Campbell,  engaged  in  'scraping  up  in- 
formation' out  of  everybody  for  his  Siddons  'Life/  to  this 
end  established  himself  for  two  days  in  Mrs.  Whitelock's 
neighbourhood.  He  thought  her  a  nice  old  lady,  "very  like 
Mrs.  Siddons,  and  the  remains  of  nearly  as  fine  a  woman ; 
but,"  he  adds,  "she  is  Mrs.  Siddons  without  her  fudge  and 
solemnity"  [from  a  pious  biographer  and  literary  executor 
this  is  strong!] — "just  what  Mrs.  Siddons  would  have  been  if 
she  had  swallowed  a  bottle  of  champagne." 

While,  in  appearance,  Mrs.  Whitelock  was  a  blonde 
caricature  of  Mrs.  Siddons,  in  manner  and  conversation  she 
was  all  that  was  opposed  to  Mrs.  Siddons's  'stillness.'  She 
used  to  preface  her  exaggerated  statements  with  "  I  declare 
to  God,"  or  "  I  wish  I  may  die,"  and  when  Mrs.  Siddons  sought 
to  stem  her  loquacity  with  "  Elizabeth,  your  wig  is  on  one 
side,"  she  would  nonchalantly  reply,  "  Oh,  is  it  ? "  and,  giving 
the  light  auburn  coiffure  a  shove  that '  put  it  quite  as  crooked 
in  the  other  direction,'  proceed  with  her  discourse. 

Mrs.  Jane  Mason  was  another  sister  of  Mrs.  Siddons's  of 
whom  history  gives  little  record  beyond  the  facts  that  she 
lived  in  Edinburgh  and  brought  up  six  children  to  the 
stage. 

Mrs.  Siddons  had  yet  another  sister,  Anne,  or  Julia  Anne, 
born  in  1764.  The  potential  turpitude  of  a  large  family, 
drained  from  its  other  members,  seemed  infused  into  this  poor 
creature,  whose  only  excuse — probably  a  valid  one — for  her 
conduct  could  have  been  that  she  was  deficient  in  moral 
responsibility.  Herself  on  the  stage,  and  married  to  a  country 
actor  named  Curtis,  while,  at  the  same  time,  leading  a  loose 
life  in  London,  she  constantly  appealed  to  public  charity, 
announcing  herself  as  the  youngest  sister  of  Mrs.  Siddons.  She 
gave  an  objectionable  lecture  ('  on  chastity  and  other  delicate 
subjects/  says  the  European  Magazine  for  November,  1783) 
at  Dr.  Graham's  Temple  of  Hymen,  and  tried,  or  pretended 
to  try,  to  commit  suicide  in  Westminister  Abbey.  These 


OTHER  BROTHERS  AND  SISTERS  155 

incidents  taking  place  during  Mrs.  Siddons's  J$rereton-cum- 
Digges  autumn  of  1783,  the  unfriendly  press  made  capital 
out  of  them,  assigning  them  to  Mrs.  Curtis's  'dire  necessity/ 
the  result  of  the  'marble-hearted'  cruelty  of  'the  five  player 
Kembles  (for  the  father  is  a  player)  and  the  mighty  Mrs. 
Siddons/ 

Her  husband  proving  a  bigamist,  in  1792  Anne  Kemble 
married  a  man  named  Hatton,  whom  she  accompanied  to 
America.  In  1800,  the  pair  settled  at  Swansea  as  hotel  keepers, 
and  the  widow  subsequently  taught  dancing  at  Kidwelly.1 
Mrs.  Siddons  allowed  her  £20  a-year,  provided  she  lived  a 
hundred  and  fifty  miles  from  London,  and  John  Kemble,  at 
his  death,  left  her  £20  a-year.  As  Anne  Hatton,  or  'Ann 
of  Swansea/  she  passed  her  later  existence  at  Swansea,  where, 
in  1838,  she  died.  She  was  a  large,  lame  woman,  and  squinted. 
She  possessed  imagination  of  a  sort,  and  published  many 
novels,  beside  poetic  trifles  "which  the  bibliographers,  if  not 
the  critics,  prize." 

1  See  Cymru  Fu  (Cardiff),  Oct.  igth,  1889. 


XII 

PIZARRO  AND  SHERIDAN,  AND  VARIOUS  PLAYS 
AND  PLAYWRIGHTS 

DURING   the  closing  years   of  the   eighteenth   century, 
those  whom  Byron  denominated  the  Tedeschi  dramatists 
were  in  fashion.     And  not  only  Gotz  and  Die  Rauber 
from  Germany,  but  the  flood  of  intellectual  jacobinism  that,  for 
some  time,  had  set  in  from  France,  together  with  the  spreading 
ripples  from  a  new  school  of  English  poetry — between  1796  and 
1800,  Coleridge  was  *  in  blossom ' — these  influences  had  combined 
to  form  a  taste  for  naturalism  in  drama.     Throughout  at  least 
one  season,  the   London   illumines  had   bewailed   the  unsym- 
pathetic pieces  put  on  at  *  Dreary '  Lane — 

"  Too  long  have  Rome  and  Athens  been  the  rage  ; 
And  classic  Buskins  soil'd  a  British  stage." 

There  was  a  real  opening  for  the  '  burgess  drama '  Diderot 
had  invented  and  Sedaine  expanded. 

At  the  close  of  1796,  before  this  fountain  was  unsealed, 
things  were  looking  so  bad  that  Mrs.  Siddons  wrote,  in  exas- 
peration, to  a  friend,  "  Our  theatre  is  going  on,  to  the  astonish- 
ment of  everybody.  Very  few  of  the  actors  are  paid,  and  all 
are  vowing  to  withdraw  themselves :  yet  still  we  go  on." 
Sheridan  himself  saw  that  two  or  three  more  plays  like 
Whitehead's  Roman  Father,  Miller's  Mahomet,  and  Reed's 
Queen  of  Carthage  would  bring  down  his  income  with  a  run. 
Possessing,  as  he  did,  in  equal  proportions,  the  dramatic  and 
the  theatrical  instincts,  he  put  into  rehearsal,  in  1798,  Kotzebue's 
The  Stranger,  the  selected  English  version  of  which,  by 
Benjamin  Thompson,  he  shaped  and  strengthened,  till  every 

word  of  his  adaptation  was,  Rogers  heard  him  say,  his  own. 

156 


VARIOUS  PLAYS  AND  PLAYWRIGHTS          157 

In  The  Stranger,  the  distinctive  Muse  of  Kotzebue,  and  of 
everything  understood  in  England,  at  his  date,  by  the  term, 
'  German  Theatre,'  rampages.1  The  play  is  domestic,  tearful, 
philosophic.  In  Act  IV.,  Baron  Steinfort  thus  addresses  Count 
Waldburg — 

"  Oh,  Charles !  awake  the  faded  ideas  of  past  joys.  Feel 
that  a  friend  is  near.  Recollect  the  days  we  pass'd  in  Hungary, 
when  we  wander'd  arm-in-arm  upon  the  banks  of  the  Danube, 
while  nature  opened  our  hearts,  and  made  us  enamoured  of 
benevolence  and  friendship." 

This  was  echt  deutsch,  it  was  also  redolent  of  the  '  nature '  of 
Diderot  and  the  susceptible  school.  Sheridan  threw  in  a  song, 
set  to  music  by  Georgiana,  Duchess  of  Devonshire,  the  original 
verse  of  which  is  better  forgotten  than  its  parody  in  The  Anti- 
Jacobin,  where  Troubadour,  caressing  the  bottle  of  noyau  under 
his  cloak,  trolls 

"  I  bear  a  secret  comfort  here,"  etc. 

When  Kemble  produced  The  Stranger,  British  critics,  to 
a  man,  fell  upon  the  play.  Practically  repeating  Garrick's 
objection  to  Douglas  (expressed  in  an  unpublished  letter  to 
Lord  Bute)  that  "the  language  is  too  often  below  the  most 
familiar  dialogue,"  they  said — what  may  equally  be  said  of 
Ibsen's  'theatre' — that  its  diction  was  flaccid  and  flat.  As 
guardians  of  public  morals,  they  had  worse  fault  to  find  with  a 
denouement  in  which  a  husband  takes  back  his  wife,  repentant 
after  what  one  disapprover  termed  '  an  extra-connubial  attach- 
ment.' This  is  a  stage  situation  with  which  frequent  repetitions 
have  since  familiarised  us,  but,  a  century  and  a  decade  ago,  it 
outraged  *  proper  feeling,'  and  caused  the  serious-minded  to 
anticipate  an  approaching  date  '  when  not  a  child  in  England 
will  have  its  head  patted  by  its  legitimate  father.' 

There  was,  thus,  something  of  the  success  of  scandal  about 
The  Stranger,  which,  in  spite  of  bathos  and  irrelevant  scenes, 
prospered  mightily.  It  was  sincere  and  realistic.  Thackeray 
explains  its  charm  in  the  '  Mrs.  Haller '  chapter  of  Pendennis. 
The  claim  of  Kotzebue's  plays  on  remembrance  rests  on  the 
fact  that  they  marked  an  advancing  wave  in  the  progress  of 

1  See  James  Smith's  travesty  of  The  Stranger  in  Rejected  Addresses. 


158  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

tragic  drama  from  the  representation  of  action  to  the  repre- 
sentation of  character. 

Mrs.  Siddons  played  Mrs.  Haller  twenty-six  times  in  four 
months,  and  The  Stranger  remained  what  was  then  styled  a 
standing  play  during,  and  long  after,  the  Kemble  period.  On 
March  i8th,  1876,  it  was  given  by  Phelps  and  Miss  Genevieve 
Ward  as  a  'revival'  matinee  at  the  Gaiety  Theatre,  and,  still 
more  recently,  Wilson  Barrett  presented  it  at  the  New  Olympic. 

As  Mrs.  Haller,  we  may  picture  Mrs.  Siddons  shining  and 
melancholy,  as  in  the  Lawrence  portrait,  with  the  'toothache 
bandage.'  Those  who  most  deplored  that  Kotzebue  had  not 
written  his  play  for  the  security  of  British  families  and  the 
edification  of  young  persons,  agreed  that  her  conception  of 
'the  reformed  housekeeper'  was  perfect  in  its  'propriety  and 
judgment.'  She  herself  must  have  enjoyed  the  part,  for  her 
daughter,  Sally,  wrote  to  Miss  Bird  :  "  My  Mother  crys  so  much 
at  it  that  she  is  always  ill  when  she  comes  home." 1 

Having  made  this  palpable  hit  with  his  first  Kotzebue 
discovery,  Sheridan,  for  the  ensuing  season,  took  in  hand,  with 
still  more  gusto,  and  putting  more  of  his  superlative  stagecraft 
into  the  alteration,  another,  more  stirring,  play — this  time,  a 
melodrama — from  the  same  source,  Pizarro. 

The  success  of  its  predecessor  was  favourable  to  it,  and  all 
the  boxes  were  'bespoke'  early.  The  scenery  was  prepared, 
the  parts  were  assigned,  Sheridan  alone  was  behindhand  with 
an  indispensable  element,  the  complete  script  of  the  play. 
Michael  Kelly  sketches,  in  his  Reminiscences,  the  agitation  on 
the  stage,  when,  on  May  24th,  1799,  with  the  first  performance2 
actually  in  progress,  and  far  advanced,  part  of  the  stuff — some 
of  the  speeches  in  the  fifth  act — were  still  to  seek,  Mrs.  Siddons, 
Charles  Kemble,  and  Barrymore  being  the  three  waiting  per- 
formers. "  Mrs.  Siddons  told  me,  that  she  was  in  an  agony  of 
fright." 

Sheridan,  on  the  other  hand,  was  never  more  himself.  From 
the  prompter's  room  upstairs,  where  he  sat  scribbling,  he 
descended  every  ten  minutes  into  the  greenroom,  bringing 
what  was  finished,  while  'abusing  himself  and  his  negligence, 

1  An  Artist's  Love  Story,  44. 

3  Surely,  in  spite  of  Kelly's  statement,  a  rehearsal  only  ? 


MRS.  SIDDONS 


BY    LAU'KENCK 


VARIOUS  PLAYS  AND  PLAYWRIGHTS          159 

and  making  a  thousand  winning  and  soothing  apologies.5  Long 
afterwards,  Payne  Collier  found,  among  Larpent,  the  Examiner 
of  plays'  collection  of  dramatic  MSS,  Sheridan's  copy  of 
Pizarro,  '  with  a  few  corrections  hit  off  in  the  most  flashing  way 
and  dashing  hand.'  No  wonder  the  corrections  were  few. 

Of  all  the  plays  of  which  Mrs.  Siddons  was  original  principal 
exponent,  Pizarro  proved  the  most  popular,  in  spite  of  its  being 
only  a  rifacimento  by  Sheridan  of  an  English  translation 
(Sheridan  could  not  read  German)  of  '  Rolla' s  Tod!  the  second 
of  Baron  von  Kotzebue's  two  *  Peru-Dramen!  Read  to-day, 
the  English  acting  version  of  Pizarro  appears  totally  to  lack 
Sheridan's  magic  touch,  it  is  turgid,  bombastic,  ranting — all  that 
Sheridan  might  have  written  another  Critic  to  ridicule,  and 
much  that  Frere,  Canning,  Ellis,  and  Gifford  did  ridicule  in 
their  skit,  '  The  Rovers.'  Sheridan's  life  as  a  dramatist  had 
terminated  in  1780,  when,  aged  twenty-nine,  he  first  took  his 
seat  in  the  House  of  Commons,  but  still  he  depended  for  his 
income  of  £10,000  a  year  upon  the  prosperity  of  the  theatre, 
and,  on  this  occasion,  at  all  events,  pitched  on  a  play  that  had 
commercial  value.  Pizarro  brought,  at  the  lowest  estimate, 
£15,000  to  Drury  Lane. 

'The  Pizzarro,'  as  Mrs.  Siddons  wrote  it,  deals  with  the 
Spanish  conquerors  in  Peru.  Pizarro  is  their  general,  and 
Elvira  (Mrs.  Siddons)  is  Pizarro's  mistress.  Over  against  the 
ferocity  of  the  one  and  the  volcanic  temperament  of  the  other 
are  set  the  heroic  magnanimity  of  Rolla,  the  Peruvian  patriot 
(John  Kemble)  and  the  sweetness  of  Alonzo's  wife,  Cora.  The 
situation  of  England  in  1799  gave  a  superficially  'topical' 
character  to  Rolla's  'bursts'  of  patriotic  appeal  to  his  Peruvians, 
and  these  c  bursts '  were,  in  reality,  adapted,  not  from  Kotzebue, 
but  from  Sheridan's  political  speeches.  The  house,  from  'the 
full-price  master  to  the  half-price  clerk,'  rose  to  '  Our  King !  our 
Country  !  and  our  God  ! '  George  III  applauded  and  approved, 
and,  when,  a  little  later,  the  Duke  of  Queensberry  asked  why 
the  stocks  had  fallen,  a  stockjobber  replied,  '  Because  at  Drury- 
lane  they  have  left  off  acting  Pizarro1. 

The  play  ends  with  Elvira — the  splendid-creature-under- 
a-cloud — being  led  away  to  be  tortured,  while  Rolla  dies 
of  wounds,  received  while  successfully  bringing  back  Cora's 


160  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

che-ild  to  her  from  the  Spaniard's  camp.  Pizarro  is  arrantly 
transpontine. 

At  first,  Mrs.  Siddons  objected  to  the  part — a  laborious 
one — of  the  'camp-follower/  but  Mrs.  Haller  had  proved  a 
personal  triumph,  and  '  Sid '  was  urgent  with  his  wife  that 
her  one  chance  of  touching  her  arrears  from  Sheridan  was 
to  keep  on  with  him.  Sheridan  felt  nervous  as  to  her  adapt- 
ability to  the  new  part,  which,  in  the  event,  she  magnified 
and  elevated  till,  with  the  exception  of  Mrs.  Haller,  it  became 
the  most  '  capital '  of  all  the  roles  originally  represented  by 
her.  In  its  initial  season,  she  played  it  thirty-one  evenings 
consecutively — an  unparalleled  run.  Master  Betty  (with  whom, 
to  the  credit  of  her  self-respect,  Mrs.  Siddons  never  acted) 
caught  his  Roscian  fire  when,  at  eleven  years  of  age,  at  Belfast, 
entering  a  theatre  for  the  first  time,  he  watched  her  play 
Elvira,  in  1 802.  He  was,  says  Dr.  Doran,  '  stricken/  he  went 
home  in  a  trance,  he  declared  he  would  die  or  be  an  actor. 

The  eighteenth  century  stage  owned,  in  succession,  three 
superexcellent  actor-managers,  Gibber,  Garrick,  and  Kemble, 
and  three  patentees  as  worthless  as  these  men  were  valuable, 
viz.  Rich,  Fleetwood,  and  Richard  Brinsley  Sheridan.  A 
large  theatre,  with  its  complicated  detail,  could  only  flourish 
by  dint  of  'the  restless,  unappeasable  solicitude'  Garrick 
bestowed  on  it ;  it  was  impossible  for  any  one  to  combine — as 
Sheridan  professed  to  do — an  active  political  life  with  the 
successful  care  of  the  more  exacting  *  House '  in  Drury 
Lane. 

Financially  considered,  Sheridan  was  what  Mrs.  Siddons, 
in  1796,  styled  him,  'uncertainty  personified/  and  (in  1798) 
'  that  drowning  gulph/  Times  were  when  such  principal  actors 
as  the  arch-empress  of  the  drama  and  John  Philip  not  only 
went  unpaid  as  to  salary,  but  found  every  stiver  of  a  benefit 
looted.  This  happened  to  Mrs.  Siddons  in  1796,  and,  during 
her  brother's  temporary  secession,  1796-1800,  she  was  made 
so  indignant  that,  sometimes,  after  the  curtain  had  risen,  the 
unremitting  one  had  to  drive  at  a  gallop  to  her  house  (where 
he  found  her  sewing !)  and  there  exert  his  utmost  irresistibility 
before  she  would  return  with  him,  and  go  on.  For  the  season, 
1789-90,  she  retired  from  Drury  Lane;  again,  in  1793,  she 


VARIOUS  PLAYS  AND  PLAYWRIGHTS  161 

retired ;  in  company  with  Kemble,  she  was  finally  driven 
away  in  1802.  In  September,  1799,  she  wrote,  to  Mrs. 
Pennington :  "  I  have  just  received  a  letter,  in  the  usual  easy 
style,  from  Mr.  Sheridan,  who,  I  fancy,  thinks  he  has  only  to 
issue  his  Sublime  Commands,"  etc.  In  the  previous  January, 
her  daughter,  Sally,  wrote :  "  I  wonder  if  Mr.  Sheridan  has  any 
notion  that  she  is  really  at  last  determined  to  have  no  more 
to  do  with  him." 

Something,  though  not  much,  might  be  urged  on  Sheridan's 
side  where  Mrs.  Siddons  was  concerned.  Over  contracts,  she 
was,  as  we  have  found  (pp.  101  and  in),  a  hard  bargainer; 
she  jolly  well  saw,  as  our  boys  say,  that  she  did  not  accept 
sweating  terms.  The  following,  from  a  letter  of  January,  1792, 
written  by  the  first  Mrs.  Sheridan  to  her  husband,  is  noteworthy, 
"  I  see  Mrs.  Siddons  is  announced.  Have  you  brought  her  to 
reasonable  terms  ?  " 1 

Charles  Surface  that  he  was,  Sheridan  captivated  every  one 
he  wished  to  captivate,  not  least  those  who  had  to  suffer  from 
his  maddening  qualities.  Lovers  of  Lamb  will  recollect  the 
instance  of  Lamb's  godfather,  Fielde,  the  Holborn  oilman, 
who,  as  sole  remuneration  for  many  years'  nightly  illumination 
of  the  orchestra  and  various  avenues  of  Drury  Lane  Theatre, 
received  a  pretty  liberal  issue  of  orders  for  the  play,  together 
with  the  honour  of  Sheridan's  supposed  familiarity,  and  "was 
content  to  have  it  so,"  since  he  regarded  the  latter  half  of  his 
recompense  as  "better  than  money."  Not  every  one  could 
afford  to  take  Fielde,  the  oilman's  view.  The  poorer  actors 
thought  it  werry  'ard  that,  at  Christmas  Eve  and  Christmas 
Day  rehearsals,  in  contrast  to  Garrick,  who,  on  these  occasions, 
had  always  allowed  'a  comfortable  cold  collation'  and  drink- 
ables, Sheridan,  the  great  diner-out  of  his  generation,  did  not 
stand  them  a  single  glass  of  beer.  James  Smith  related  how 
Delpini,  the  clown,  was  goaded  by  non-payment  into  telling 
Sheridan  plainly  what  an  honest  fellow  thought  of  him,2  and 
Miss  Constance  Hill,  in  her  pleasant  volume,  The  House  in 
St.  Martin's  Street,  narrates,  from  the  previously  unpublished 

1  Sheridan,  by  W.  Fraser  Rae,  ii.  143,  1896. 

2  Cf.  Grimaldi's  story  of  Sheridan,  Life  and  Times  oj  Frederick  Reynolds,  ii. 
231-33. 

II 


1 62  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

journal-letters  of  Susan  Burney,  a  better  story,  which  she 
permits  me  to  quote.  The  scene  is  laid  at  Dr.  Burney's — 

" '  Indeed,  Mr.  Sheridan  he  use  me  very  ill/  cries 
Pacchierotti.  '  I  assure  you  I  have  a  great  will  .  .  .  voglia 
come  si  dice?' 

" '  A  great  mind!  said  I. 

" '  A  great  mind  to  call  him  Rascal.  He  provoke  me  too 
much !  .  .  .  I  will  write  him  a  note.' 

"  Accordingly  he  took  from  his  pocket  a  bit  of  paper,  and 
wrote  the  following  lines  : — 

" '  Pacchierotti  sends  his  compts.  to  Mr.  Sheridan,  and  is 
very  displeased  to  be  obliged  to  call  him  Rascal — but  his 
conduct  is  in  everything  so  irregular  he  can  give  no  better 

title  to  so  great  Breaker  of  his  Word.  D n  him  and 

his  way  of  thinking,  which  I  wish  it  may  bring  him  to  the 
Gallows.'" 

But  the  opera  singer  never  sent  this  'incendiary  letter/ 
and  Sheridan  continued,  according  to  Mrs.  Thrale's  mot,  to  grow 
'  fat  like  Heliogabalus  on  the  tongues  of  nightingales.' 

There  is  *  no  pause  i'  the  leading'  of  contemporary  opinion 
as  to  Sheridan's  moral  irresponsibility.  It  is  unanimous.  For 
a  last  touch  of  it,  we  may  take  what  Campbell  told  Moore 
as  to  there  having  been  found,  at  Sheridan's  death,  "  an  immense 
heap  of  letters,  which  he  had  taken  charge  of  to  frank,  from 
poor  husbands  to  wives,  fathers  to  children,  etc."  Some  one 
has  yet  to  arise  who  will  whitewash  Sheridan's  character,  and 
make  a  satisfactory  job  of  it. 

'  Sheri '  (as  his  first  wife,  in  her  letters,  wrote  it)  was  always 
readier  at  accepting  responsibilities  than  at  working  them  off. 
Whenever  anything  in  the  nature  of  a  claim  was  magnanimously 
presented  to  his  Keltic  imagination  he  acted  decisively  in 
response.  The  instance  of  his  immediately  paying  a  trades- 
man when  he  proffered  his  bill  as  a  debt  of  honour  is 
symptomatic. 

After  Shakespeare's  plays,  The  School  for  Scandal  and 
The  Rivals  continue  to  be  the  nation's  favourite  dramatic 
classics,  growing,  not  diminishing,  in  both  popular  and  critical 
esteem.  Granted  that  Sheridan  'played  the  sedulous  ape' 
to  Buckingham,  Farquhar,  and  Congreve,  that  he  was  not 


VARIOUS  PLAYS  AND  PLAYWRIGHTS  163 

a  dramatist  accustomed  (in  Mr.  Archer's  phrase)  to  think  in 
terms  of  character,  that  he  exhibited  a  gentlewoman  guilty 
of  malapropisms  which  would  have  been  flagrant  in  the 
milliner  who  supplied  her  with  caps,  that  he  made  his  clowns 
(as,  in  The  Critic,  he  whimsically  acknowledged)  scarcely  less 
elaborately  pungent  than  his  fine  gentlemen.  When  all  is 
said,  his  two  great  comedies  hold  their  own  round  the  world, 
as  an  eternal  demonstration  that  wit  is  not  the  exclusive 
property  of  the  Latin  races.  The  School  for  Scandal  tingles 
with  wit  more  many-faceted  than  exists  elsewhere  throughout 
the  range  of  Weltlitteratur*  in  as  small  compass. 

Resembling  Burke,  in  being  un  homme  de  rien — simply 
'standing  on  his  head' — Sheridan,  like  Burke,  rose  to  a 
distinguished  position  in  public  esteem,  while,  socially,  he  rose 
still  higher,  his  character  and  advancement,  in  combination, 
reminding  us  of  Disraeli  rather  than  of  the  more  illustrious 
Irishman,  Sheridan's  contemporary.  The  fact  that  he  was, 
at  once,  managing  proprietor  of  Drury  Lane  and  a  Minister  of 
the  Crown  is,  to  a  modern  imagination,  in  itself  piquant. 
That  he  never  rose  high  in  office  was  largely  due  to  the 
fact  of  the  long  Tory  ascendancy  which  covered  most  of  his 
political  life.  Except  to  readers  of  history,  his  name,  as 
occurring  in  public  affairs,  is  best  remembered  by  the  tradition 
of  the  florid — in  the  end,  futile — speeches  he  delivered  on  the 
charge  concerning  the  Begums  of  Oude,  in  the  first  year  of 
the  greatest  state  trial  since  Charles  I's.  His  best  memorial, 
in  his  public  capacity,  is  that  in  those  venal  days,  he,  who 
had  not  inherited  a  shilling,  could  justly  boast  'an  un- 
purchasable  mind.' 

Next  after  wit,  tact  was  the  '  note '  of  his  utterances.  His 
good  taste  in  personal  reference  was  never  better  shown  than 
when,  in  1787,  he  was  entrusted  with  the  task  of  making  such 
an  amende  to  '  Princess  Fitz '  in  the  House  as  should  pacify 
feelings  outraged  by  Fox's  demi-official  denial  there,  four 
nights  previously,  of  the  fact  of  her  marriage  to  '  Prinny.' 
Yet  no  man's  jests  at  the  expense  of  others  were  more  pointed, 
or  possessed  a  flavour  more  wholly  their  own  than  Sheridan's, 
and  we  seem  to  see  the  teasing,  fun-loving  eyes,  set  in  the 
heavy-featured  Bardolph  countenance,  as  we  read  that  when, 


1 64  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

remarking  in  a  Parliamentary  speech  that  Dr.  Willis,  George  Ill's 
insanity  specialist,  professed  to  have  the  power  to  read  the 
heart  from  the  face,  he  added,  looking  at  Pitt,  that  'this 
simple  statement  seemed  to  alarm  the  right  honourable 
gentleman.' 

His  lightest  quip  was  the  rueful  one  he  made  when 
acquaintances  marvelled  at  his  being  able  to  sit  swallowing 
port  in  the  Piazza  Coffee  House,  while  the  other  M.P.s — their 
debate  broken  up  from  sympathy — were  out  watching 

"  the  long  column  of  revolving  flames 
Shake  its  red  shadow  o'er  the  startled  Thames," 

as  his  uninsured  property  in  Drury  Lane  sank  to  ashes.  "  A 
man  may  surely  take  a  glass  of  wine  by  his  own  fireside," 
said  he.  His  stoicism  may  have  contained  something  of 
insensibility.  Levity  was  his  vice. 

Sheridan's  is  an  elusive  character  to  estimate.  Probably, 
Professor  Brander  Matthews  best  summed  it  up,  as  from 
within,  by  saying,  "when  he  had  once  put  himself  in  a 
position  where  he  was  unable  to  do  exactly  what  he  had 
agreed  to  do,  and  what  he  always  desired  to  do,  he  ceased 
to  care  whether  or  no  he  did  all  he  could  do."  With  greater 
hardness,  and  looking  at  Sheridan  from  the  standpoint,  not 
of  faith,  but  works,  the  anonymous  contemporary  author  of 
Sketches  of  Distinguished  Public  Characters  of  George  the 
Fourth,  held  that  "none  who  enjoyed  so  much  personal 
influence  ever  did  less  for  the  world."  Posterity  is  fairly 
agreed  that  Sheridan's  brilliant  life  lacked  purpose,  and  most 
of  us  share  the  impression  he  made  on  Wilson's  Shepherd, 
who  '  couldna  thoh:  to  hear  sic  a  sot  as  Sherry  aye  classed  wi' 
Pitt  and  Burke/ 

Turning  to  lesser  people  who  wrote  pieces  in  which  Mrs. 
Siddons  shone,  it  is  sadly  true  that  the  rank  and  file  of  the 
dramatists  '  were  with  want  of  genius  curst.'  No  character 
created  by  Mrs.  Siddons  has  continued  to  hold  its  own  on 
the  stage.  Forgotten  are  those  stilted,  stodgy  tragedians, 
Cumberland,  Jephson,  Murphy,  each  of  whom  mistook  a 
procession  of  verbiage  for  a  play ;  equally  forgotten  are 
the  meagre  comedians  and  farce-writers,  of  whom  Frederick 


VARIOUS  PLAYS  AND  PLAYWRIGHTS  165 

Reynolds,  Dibdin,  and  Cherry  may  be  named  as  representative. 
Mrs.  Siddons's  biographer,  Boaden,  was  among  those  who 
came  to  'an  untimely  beginning'  in  the  department  of 
tragedies.  His  effort  was  called  Aurelio  and  Miranda,  but,  in 
spite  of  Mrs.  Siddons's  acting,  and  in  spite  of  the  author's 
asseveration  that  '  the  three  first  acts  were  rather  powerful  in 
interest,'  it  failed  dismally.  It  was  founded  on  Ambrosio,  or  the 
Monk,  and  '  Mat '  Lewis,  the  author  of  that  nerve-racking 
romance,  was  himself  eminently  successful  at  Drury  Lane 
with  The  Castle  Spectre,  in  which  Mrs.  Jordan  played  Angela, 
the  heroine.  The  Castle  Spectre  drew  great  and  constant 
houses,  and,  for  a  time,  eclipsed  Shakespeare.  As  Byron 
sagely  said,  "  It  is  fitting  there  should  be  good  plays,  now 
and  then,  besides  Shakespeare's,"  though,  as  critics  judge, 
Lewis's  numerous  pieces  would  scarcely  be  called  good  plays. 
Still,  "  tous  les  genres  sont  permis,  hors  le  genre  ennuyeux"  to 
that  The  Castle  Spectre  did  not  belong.  It  may  be  doubted 
whether  Mrs.  Radcliffe  or  Lewis  did  more  to  kindle  the  love 
for  all  that  Catherine  Morland  thought  'horrid' — and  vastly 
delightful.  The  German  tales  of  mystery  were  the  source  at 
which  both  authors  drank. 

It  was  regrettable,  both  for  his  sake  and  the  theatre's,  that, 
in  spite  of  his  extreme  and  naif  delight  in  Mackay's  per- 
formances of  the  Bailie  and  Dominie  Sampson,  Scott  would 
never  undertake  to  dramatise  any  of  his  novels  or  poems, 
leaving  the  task,  and  the  profit,  to  other,  inferior  hands. 
His  early  prose  attempt,  The  House  of  Aspen  (also  drawn  from 
a  German  Quelle),  was  his  solitary  direct  contribution  to  drama, 
and  this  John  Kemble  put  in  rehearsal  (in  1799)  but  did  not 
produce. 

On  November  3rd,  1784,  Mrs.  Siddons  first  played  Margaret 
of  Anjou,  in  Franklin's  The  Earl  of  Warwick,  not  a  new  drama, 
nor  a  good  one,  yet  one  in  which,  during  a  long  series  of  years, 
her  acting  was  warmly  praised.  In  1785,  Mrs.  Tickell  wrote  to 
her  sister,  Mrs.  Sheridan,  her  observant  comments  on  the 
rendering — 

"  I  may  tell  you  that  Mrs.  Siddons  was  charming  and  very 
different  from  what  we  had  ever  seen  of  her.  If  you 
remember  the  part,  there  is  not  only  a  great  deal  of  ranting, 


1 66  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

that  is  in  the  style  of  Zara,  but  also  a  sort  of  irony  and  level 
speaking,  or  rather  familiar  conversation  that  placed  her  quite 
in  a  new  light.  I  thought  she  was  very  great  indeed.  Yet  in 
your  life  you  never  saw  anything  so  like  Kemble  in  every  look 
and  word  as  her  familiar  tones." 

This  is  interesting,  as  showing  Mrs.  Siddons  capable  of 
successfully  varying  the  large  style  and  heroic  delivery  natural 
to  her,  as  to  all  her  kin,  with  colloquial  realism. 

Almost  immediately  after  first  playing  Margaret  of  Anjou, 
she  created  the  part  of  Matilda  in  The  Carmelite,  a  part 
Cumberland  professed  to  have  arranged  in  all  its  features  to 
suit  her.  The  modern  'star'  play  was  already  creeping  into 
vogue.  The  Rev.  William  Mason  designed  Elfrida  with  an 
eye  to  Mrs  Hartley's  every  moyen,  and  Lalor  Sheil  contrived 
his  Adelaide  expressly  for  Miss  O'Neill.  Genest  said :  "  If  a 
list  were  to  be  made  of  all  the  pieces  in  which  an  Irishman 
is  pressed  into  the  service  merely  for  the  sake  of  Johnstone 
[commonly  called  Irish  Johnstone,  an  actor  of  value]  it  would 
be  no  short  one."  Button  designated  the  innovation  'the 
present  preposterous  system/  and  when,  in  1825,  Pierce  Egan 
published  The  Life  of  an  Actor,  he  spoke  of  the  old-fashioned 
mode  of  play-writing  as  entirely  exploded  in  favour  of  the 
author  —  '  Mr.  Give-up-every thing '  —  writing  up  to  some 
particular  actor,  actress,  or  group. 

Round  about  1800,  several  ladies  launched  tragedies. 
Byron  thus  disposed  of  them :  "  Women  (saving  Joanna 
Baillie)  cannot  write  tragedy:  they  have  not  seen  enough 
nor  felt  enough  of  life  for  it." 

The  Scotchwoman  Byron  credited  with  good  tragedies 
produced  eight  volumes  of  them.  Three  consisted  of  a 
'Series  of  Plays,  in  which  it  is  attempted  to  delineate  the 
stronger  passions  of  the  mind — each  passion  being  the  subject 
of  a  tragedy  and  a  comedy.'  They  were  designed  for  the 
stage,  but,  pace  the  opinion  of  England's  then  foremost  man 
of  letters,  they  were  inadequate  to  sustain  stage  tests.  It 
was  expected  that  Mrs.  Siddons  and  Kemble  would  make 
some  coups  de  theatre  in  De  Montfort  (the  tragedy  that 
delineated  the  passion  of  hate),  but  the  play,  produced  on 
April  29th,  1800,  oozed  through  eleven  nights,  and  then 


VARIOUS  PLAYS  AND  PLAYWRIGHTS          167 

(owing,  said  Sheridan,  to  the  perverted  taste  of  a  public  that 
preferred  to  see  elephants  on  the  stage)  stood  stagnant, 
till  Kean  again  failed  with  it,  in  1821.  It  was  over-moralised, 
mechanically  organised,  palpably  one  in  a  set.  Yet  it  has 
beauties,  and — as  a  play  to  be  read — vigour,  that  go  some 
way  to  explain  Byron's  salvo  of  Miss  Baillie,  as  well  as  the 
eulogium  of  Scott,  who,  while  placing  Campbell  and  himself 
infinitely  below  Burns  among  Scots  poets — '  not  to  be  named 
in  the  same  day' — regarded  Joanna  as  'now  the  highest 
genius  of  her  country.'  In  point  of  fact,  she  possessed  the 
idyllic,  not  the  dramatic,  gift. 

Miss  Burney  penned  a  tragedy,  Edwy  and  Elgiva,  and 
Mrs.  Siddons  played  in  it,  but  it  was  visited  with  damnation 
on  its  first  night  of  life.  The  saving  sense  of  the  absurd 
that  sparkles  in  every  line  of  Fanny's  diary  deserted  her 
when  she  tried  to  soar. 

Percy,  a  Tragedy  by  Hannah  More,  had  every  advantage 
from  Garrick's  encouragement  when  launched  in  1777,  and 
Mrs.  Siddons  and  Kemble  did  their  best  with  it  in  1787,  but 
the  public  found  it  'sickly,'  it  had  no  root.  That  Mrs. 
Siddons  herself  knew  what  constitutes  a  good  play  appears 
from  her  remark  in  a  letter  to  Whalley  dispraising  Great- 
heed's,  "All  the  people  in  it  forget  their  feelings  to  talk 
metaphor  instead  of  passion." 


XIII 
PROMINENT  THEATRICAL  CONTEMPORARIES 

BY  their  original  numbers,  augmented,  as  we  have  seen, 
by  their  marriages  within  their  own  profession,  the 
Kembles,  only  less  than  by  their  talents,  character, 
and  prudence,  bade  fair,  at  one  time,  to  block  theatrical 
avenues  and  monopolise  emoluments."1  In  the  greenroom 
their  style  was  termed  '  the  family-acting/  and,  by  the  openly 
envious,  'the  Kemble  rant.'  Their  recitative  method,  though 
partly  determined  by  the  blank  verse  tragedies  then  in 
vogue,  was  also  a  manner  they  adopted  from  temperament, 
and  by  preference.  The  spirited  manner  of  Garrick  had 
been  exercised  in  the  same  parts  in  which  the  Kemble 
brothers  were  as  declamatory  as  Quin. 

At  no  period  of  her  great  career  had  Mrs.  Siddons  cause 
for  serious  anxiety  as  to  a  rival.  It  was  inevitable,  when 
she  first  became  celebrated,  that  the  sexagenarian  play- 
goer— an  evergreen  plague — should  talk  heavily  to  younger 
people  about  Susanna  Gibber  and  Hannah  Pritchard.  Not 
only  did  old  Lady  Lucy  Meyrick  dilate  on  the  plebeian  (!) 
emotion  of  Mrs.  Siddons's  Lady  Macbeth  compared  with 
Mrs.  Pritchard's,  but  Lord  Harcourt,  the  husband  of  one  of 
Mrs.  Siddons's  closest  friends,  while  allowing  that  she  could 
'assume  parts  with  a  spirit,'  held  her  altogether  second  in 
the  somnambulist  scene  to  the  great  Hannah,  her  tragic  pre- 
decessor. 

From  the  Bath  Theatre,  as  might  have  been  expected, 
came  the  first  of  the  younger  ladies  whose  names  were,  in 
succession,  for  a  short  time,  whispered  as  possible  disturbers 

1  "  Drury  Lane  will  be  in  the  hands  of  the  Kemble  family,  in  less  than  six  years." 

— The  Morning  Post,  April  3ist,  1784. 

168 


PROMINENT  THEATRICAL  CONTEMPORARIES     169 

of  Mrs.  Siddons's  peace.  Elizabeth  (sometimes  called  Anne) 
Brunton  came  up  to  Covent  Garden  for  the  1785-86  season, 
and  some  spasmodic  endeavours  were  made  in  the  press 
to  persuade  the  public  that  in  the  new  arrival  it  would  find 
a  more  than  Siddonian  star.  The  Green-Room  Mirror  said 
Miss  Brunton  was  '  the  Roscia  of  the  age !  and  phoenomenon 
of  NatureV  adding,  with  a  touch  of  anti-climax,  that  she 
promised  'to  prove  a  principal  support  of  the  British  stage' 

Although  London  at  large  did  not  confirm  the  enthusiasm 
of  Bath,  Miss  Brunton  was  acknowledged  to  be  a  capable 
actress.  She  played  at  Covent  Garden  till  1792,  when, 
having,  in  the  previous  year,  married  Merry,  who,  as  '  Delia 
Crusca,'  had  formerly,  in  Florence,  been  a  prominent  member 
of  the  Arno  Miscellany  set,  she  withdrew  from  the  London 
boards,  to  reappear,  in  1796,  as  a  star  of  the  first  magnitude 
in  the  United  States,  where  she  settled,  lost  her  husband  in 
1798,  and  married  Warren,  the  Philadelphia  and  Baltimore 
Manager.  This  Miss  Brunton  is  not  to  be  confounded  either 
with  her  younger  sister,  Louisa,  who  played  comedy  at 
Covent  Garden  from  1803  till  1807,  when  she  became 
Countess  of  Craven,  or  with  her  niece,  another  Miss  Elizabeth 
Brunton,  whose  stage  career  extended  from  1815  to  1849. 
This  third  Miss  Brunton  married  the  actor,  Frederick  Henry 
Yates.  She  was  Edmund  Yates's  mother. 

Late  in  life,  Mrs.  Siddons  spoke  of  Miss  Sarah  Smith, 
afterwards  Mrs.  Bartley,  as  having  been  the  lady  next  held 
up,  after  Elizabeth  Brunton,  as  her  likely  rival,  but  such  a 
suggestion  must  have  been  idle,  sterling  actress  though  Mrs. 
Bartley  was.  Combe  (who  disliked  Mrs.  Siddons)  publishing, 
in  1812,  his  'Tour  of  Doctor  Syntax,'  vainly  tried,  by 
ignoring  the  great  actress,  to  exalt  Miss  Smith  above  her, 
in  the  following  passage  : — 

"  The  Drama's  children  strut  and  play 
In  borrow'd  parts,  their  lives  away; — 
And  then  they  share  the  oblivious  lot ; 
Smith  will,  like  Gibber,  be  forgot! 
Gibber  with  fascinating  art 
Could  wake  the  pulses  of  the  heart ; 
But  hers  is  an  expiring  name, 
And  darling  Smith's  will  be  the  same." 


i;o  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

A  sounder  judge  than  Combe,  Mrs.  Siddons's  worshipper, 
Macready,  found,  when  he  acted  with  Miss  Smith,  that  "of 
the  soul,  that  goes  to  the  making  of  an  artist,  there  was 
none." 

Before  me,  dated  'Dec.  28.  1814;  lies  an  unpublished 
letter1  from  Mrs.  Siddons  to  her  niece,  'Nanny'  Twiss,  in 
the  thick  of  which — with  one  of  those  abrupt  changes  of 
subject  that  so  often  indicate,  on  the  correspondent's  part,  a 
strong,  veiled  interest  in  the  new  topic — these  words  occur : 
"You  see  Miss  Oniel  has  quite  extinguish  me.  She  has 
really  a  great  deal  of  tallent  and  I  hope  the  public  will 
continue  their  adoration  of  her,  for  I  hear  she  is  a  very 
amiable  good  young  woman."  The  writer  had  retired  two 
years  previously,  yet  the  fact  rankled  that  the  public  should 
be  paying  adoration  at  another  shrine.  To  Rogers,  Mrs. 
Siddons  frankly  admitted  that  the  public  had  a  sort  of 
pleasure  in  mortifying  their  old  favourites  by  setting  up 
new  idols. 

Belonging  to  the  long  line  of  conspicuous  Irish  players, 
Eliza  O'Neill,  aged  twenty,  made  a  debut  in  Dublin  in  1811. 
Three  years  later  occurred  the  inevitable  migration,  and,  on 
her  first  night  at  Covent  Garden,  she  took  the  audience  by 
storm.  She  was  naturalesque  and  mobile,  and  Talma  himself 
spoke  of  her  voice  of  tears.  Beauty,  also,  she  possessed,  and 
the  gift  of  blushing  rosily  under  stage  emotion,  though,  beyond 
that  power,  her  dramatic  expressiveness  resided  in  her  postures 
and  gestures,  not  in  her  face.  Hazlitt  acutely  observed  a 
'  fleshiness '  about  her  manner,  voice,  and  person  which  incapaci- 
tated her  for  the  Volumnia  of  Rome  and  of  Shakespeare. 

She  had  sense  enough  to  refuse  the  part  of  Lady  Macbeth. 
The  trenchant  mother  of  an  Archbishop  of  Dublin  thus  con- 
trasted her  with  her  infinitely  greater  predecessor  : — 

"  Miss  O'Neill  is  said  to  be  more  natural  than  Mrs.  Siddons 
was,  but  to  gain  no  more  by  it  than  waxwork  does  by  being 
a  closer  representation  of  nature  than  the  Apollo  Belvedere. 
Very  few  discriminate  sufficiently  in  the  arts  between  the  merit 
of  an  exact  representation  and  an  ennobled  one ;  and  people  are 
not  fair  enough  in  general  to  allow  that  something  must  be 

1  Kindly  placed  at  my  disposal  by  Mr.  Frank  Dillon. 


PROMINENT  THEATRICAL  CONTEMPORARIES     171 

sacrificed  of  fidelity  in  order  to  reach  that  elevated  imitation 
which  alone  gives  strong  and  repeated  pleasure." 

Miss  O'Neill  had  five  years  in  which  to  prove  her 
secondariness.  In  1819,  Mr.  (afterwards  Sir)  William  Wrixon 
Beecher,  M.P.  for  Marlow,  swept  her  off  the  boards.  When 
the  wife  of  a  baronet,  she  is  said  to  have  affected — as  Lady 
Derby  (Miss  Farren)  is  also  said  to  have  done — an  amusing 
ignorance  of  the  details  of  stage  life. 

A  shoal  of  young  women  formed  themselves  on  Mrs. 
Siddons.  Genest  particularly  mentions  Mrs.  Weston,  whose 
performance  of  Lady  Macbeth  was  a  close  imitation.  In  her 
retired  years,  Mrs.  Siddons  had  protegees,  and  instructed  them 
(non-professionally)  in  acting.  One  was  Miss  Dance,  whom 
the  past-mistress  warmly  recommended,  begging  her  friends  to 
be  present  on  March  2Oth,  1821,  at  The  Stranger,  at  Covent 
Garden,  when  Miss  Dance  was  to  make  her  first  appearance 
on  any  stage.  Miss  Dance  possessed  good  abilities  and  good — 
somewhat  Siddons-like — looks,  but  she  neglected  work  for  '  balls 
and  parties,'  and  was  discharged  in  disgrace.  She  had  failed 
to  learn  from  Mrs.  Siddons  the  great  lesson  that  the  laurel 
must  be  paid  for. 

Not  only  had  Mrs.  Siddons  imitators,  but  a  mimic — in  the 
shape  of  Mrs.  Mary  (Becky)  Wells,  or  Mrs.  Leah  Sumbel,  who 
was  so  very  much  a  scapegrace  that  both  Miss  Farren  and 
Mrs.  Siddons  refused  to  play  if  she  were  given  the  secondary 
parts.  At  Covent  Garden,  in  1788,  and  before  and  after  that 
year,  in  the  provinces,  Becky  Wells  used  to  represent  '  a  scene 
from  Two  Great  Tragic  Actresses' — Mrs.  Siddons  and  Mrs. 
Crawford — but  beyond  impudence,  a  leering  smile,  and  a  known 
character  for  liveliness,  the  performance  was  only  what  they 
then  called  '  La  La,'  i.e.  indifferent,  and  in  every  way  inferior 
to  the  imitations  of  that  brilliant  amateur,  Simons.  Palmer, 
nevertheless,  paid  Mrs.  Wells  £$o  a  night  to  give  her  imitations 
in  Bath. 

It  was  the  speciality  of  Elizabeth  Farren,  on  the  stage,  to 
represent  the  well-bred  woman  of  fashion,  smiling,  adroit,  quick, 
— some  critics  said  too  quick — at  recognising  a  double  entendre, 
while  remaining  as  invulnerable  in  manner  as  she  was  in  private 
character.  Frigid — in  the  latter  capacity — she  may  have  been, 


THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

and  long-sighted  she  certainly  was,  for  she  remained  unwon  till 
nearly  forty,  for  the  sake  of  the  twelfth  Earl  of  Derby,  a  man 
of  such  quaint  appearance  that  he  looked  a  caricature  in  real 
life.  The  attachment  between  them  covered  eighteen  previous 
years,  Lord  Derby's  first  Countess  not  having  had  the  good  taste 
to  disappear  till  within  seven  weeks  of  his  second  marriage. 
Early  in  1796,  we  find  Mrs.  Piozzi  writing  to  the  Rev.  Daniel 
Lysons :  "  Will  Miss  Farren's  coronet  never  be  put  on  ?  I 
thought  the  paralytic  countess  would  have  made  way  for  her 
long  ago."  All  London  knew  the  state  of  affairs,  and  appre- 
ciated the  skill  with  which  Miss  Farren  kept  her  unalterable 
Earl  (the  phrase  was  Horace  Walpole's)  at  thus-far-and-no- 
farther  point.  Partly  as  a  result  of  having  directed  amateur 
theatricals  at  the  Duke  of  Richmond's,  she  visited,  meanwhile, 
in  very  exclusive  sets.  Walpole,  in  a  letter  to  Miss  Berry, 
records  the  fact  of  supping,  in  1791,  at  her  house — the  Bow- 
Window  house  in  Green  Street — to  meet  Sir  Charles  and  Lady 
Dorothy  Hotham,  Kemble,  Lord  Yarborough's  sister-in-law, 
Mrs.  Anderson,  and  that  conclusive  guarantor  of  a  hostess's 
reputation,  Mrs.  Siddons. 

Miss  Farren,  certainly  the  most  eminent  comedienne  of 
Mrs.  Siddons's  earlier  prime,  had  been  originally  introduced  to 
Colman  by  Younger,  for  whom  she  had  played  in  Liverpool. 
She  came,  at  about  eighteen,  to  the  Little  Theatre  ('  the  Hay- 
market')  in  1777,  and  began  work  as  Miss  Hardcastle.  On 
her  slight  shoulders  descended,  at  Drury  Lane — where  she 
became,  from  1778  onwards,  principally  acclimatised  —  the 
mantle  Mrs.  Abington  was  soon  to  let  fall,  and  she  wore  it  with 
the  elegance  with  which  she  wears  the  fur-trimmed  white  silk 
'  John '  cloak  in  the  Lawrence  full-length,  till  Mrs.  Jordan, 
taking  the  comedy  throne  Miss  Farren,  at  marriage,  vacated, 
brought  in  another,  less  rarefied,  type  of  light  acting. 

On  the  date  (May  1st)  of  Miss  Farren's  wedding,  Mrs. 
Siddons  referred  to  her  marriage  in  an  epilogue,  by  Mrs.  Piozzi, 
unexceptionable — to  use  a  word  of  the  period — in  taste.  Many 
of  the  journalists,  on  the  other  hand,  were  fulsome.  One  writer 
said — what  was,  no  doubt,  true  enough — that  "the  profession 
she  has  just  quitted  will  acquire  a  respectability  from  her  ex- 
altation (such  are  the  prejudices  of  the  world)  which  no  talents, 


PROMINENT  THEATRICAL  CONTEMPORARIES     173 

however  extraordinary,  could  procure  for  it."  Twelve  years 
after  her  marriage,  Creevey,  after  dining,  with  his  wife,  at  Lord 
Derby's,  recorded — 

" .  .  .at  Lord  Derby's  nobody  but  us.  Lord  Derby  excellent 
in  every  respect,  as  he  always  is,  and  my  Lady  still  out  of 
spirits  for  the  loss  of  her  child,  but  surpassing  even  in  her 
depressed  state  all  your  hereditary  nobility  I  have  ever  seen, 
tho'  she  came  from  the  stage  to  her  title." 

The  true  Thalia  of  our  Melpomene's  prime  was  not  Miss 
Farren,  but  she  who,  in  Boaden's  for  once  picture-making 
words,  "  ran  upon  the  stage  as  a  //^-ground,  and  laughed  for 
sincere  wildness  of  delight."  If  ever  a  human  creature  was 
designed  by  nature  to  please  and  entertain,  it  was  Dora 
Jordan. 

To  Tate  Wilkinson  she  owed  the  surname  that  suggests  a 
baptism.  When,  in  1782,  as  Dora  Bland,  she  arrived,  aged 
twenty,  in  Leeds,  with  her  mother,  brother,  and  sister,  none  of 
them  '  well  accoutred,'  he  admitted  her  into  his  company,  after 
briefly  testing  her  merits.  Previously,  in  Dublin  and  Cork,  she 
had  undertaken  anything  and  everything  Daly  wanted,  and 
when  Wilkinson  gruffly  asked  whether  her  line  was  tragedy, 
comedy,  or  opera,  she  replied,  'All.'  Wilkinson  expressed 
astonishment,  but  the  protean  aspirant  was  successfully  cast, 
one  night,  Calista,  in  The  Fair  Penitent,  another,  Priscilla 
Tomboy  in  the  farce  of  The  Romp,  another,  William  ("  she 
sported  the  best  leg  ever  seen  on  the  stage,"  the  Rev.  John 
Genest  apprises  us)  in  Mrs.  Brooke's  opera,  Rosina.  Her 
playbill  name  was  'Miss  Francis,'  but,  before  she  had  been 
long  in  Yorkshire,  family  reasons  *  indicated '  another  change  of 
name,  and  one  fortified  by  *  Mrs.'  "  You  have  crossed  the  water, 
my  dear,"  said  Wilkinson,  "  so  I'll  call  you  Jordan."  "  And  by 
the  memory  of  Sam,"  he  would  add,  when  gleefully  boasting, 
in  after  years,  of  his  association  with  the  comedy  queen,  "  if  she 
didn't  take  my  joke  in  earnest,  and  call  herself  Mrs.  Jordan  ever 
since!"  When,  one  August  evening  of  1785,  as  the  Poor 
Soldier,  she  was  trying  to  exhilarate  a  York  audience,  Mrs. 
Siddons  happened  to  be  in  front.  As  reported  by  Wilkinson,  her 
comment  on  the  performance  was  to  the  effect  that  Mrs.  Jordan 
was  better  where  she  was  than  to  venture  on  the  London 


174  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

boards.  The  doubt  she  expressed  was,  at  the  moment,  justified 
by  the  limited  enthusiasm  manifested  by  the  York  house. 
Fourteen  months  later,  we  find  Mrs.  Siddons  writing  from 
London  to  Whalley :  "  We  have  a  great  comic  actress  now, 
called  Mrs.  Jordan ;  she  has  a  vast  deal  of  merit,  but  in  my 
mind  is  not  perfection." 

The  day  was  at  hand  when,  in  London,  the  narrower- 
minded  lovers  of  Mrs.  Jordan  would  inquire,  concerning  Mrs. 
Siddons,  '  Where  is  Nature  ? '  while  the  duller  among  Mrs. 
Siddons's  admirers  would  retort,  concerning  Mrs.  Jordan, 
1  Surely  she  is  vulgar.'  And  Dora  Jordan's  day  outlasted  even 
the  ten-year  day  of  the  Blessed  Damozel,  for  it  commenced 
with  her  first  Drury  Lane  season,  1785-86,  and  only  terminated 
in  1814,  when,  'a-tiptoe,'  professionally,  'on  the  highest  point  of 
being,'  she  suddenly  quitted  the  London  stage,  two  years  before 
her  forlorn  death  at  St.  Cloud.  She  had,  formerly,  always 
talked  of  retiring  whenever  Mrs.  Siddons  should  retire. 

In  spite  of  the  '  steady,  melting  eye '  that  sank  into  Lamb's 
heart,  Mrs.  Jordan's  face  was  not  what  they  then  termed  '  critic- 
ally'  handsome,  though  her  figure  received  the  high  encomium  of 
Sir  Joshua  Reynolds's  statement  that  it  was  the  most  perfect  in 
symmetry  he  had  ever  seen.  She  had  a  better  gift,  for  an  actress, 
than  beauty — that  of  being  whatever  character  she  assumed. 

She  subjugated  all  the  men  in  the  audience;  she  seemed 
created  to  dry  the  tears  Mrs.  Siddons  bade  flow ;  like  Fontaine, 
the  celebrated  Dublin  dancing-master  of  her  time,  she  seemed 
to  be  for  ever  saying, '  Egayez-vous>  mes  enfans>  il  riy  a  que  $a? 
All  that  was  so  sunshiny  and  full  of  fun  in  her  appearance,  the 
elastic  spring,  the  artless  gestures,  the  quickness  of  turn — 
gained  value  from  her  humourous  delivery,  her  little  breaks  of 
voice  and  arch  inflections.  She  made  such  words  as  'best 
gown/  '  but  I  don't — I  won't,' '  I  a'n't  deaf,'  each  a  whimsical 
miracle,  and  Macready  speaks  of  'certain  bass  tones'  which 
'  would  have  disturbed  the  gravity  of  a  hermit.'  Gait  says  that 
the  way  she  pronounced  the  word,  '  ecod ! '  sounded  as  if  she 
had  taken  a  mouthful  of  some  ripe,  delicious  peach.  Coleridge, 
discoursing,  in  1825,  at  Lamb's  Colebrooke  Cottage,  avowed  that 
it  was  the  witchery  of  her  tone  that  suggested  the  idea  in  his 
Remorse  that,  if  Lucifer  had  been  permitted  to  retain  his  angel 


PROMINENT  THEATRICAL  CONTEMPORARIES    175 

voice,  hell  would  have  been  hell  no  longer.  The  best  description 
of  a  laugh  I  know  is  Leigh  Hunt's  description  of  Mrs.  Jordan's. 

In  spite  of  her  Leeds  debut  as  Calista,  tragedy  was  outside 
Mrs.  Jordan's  range,  nor  was  she  capable  of  personating  a  fine 
lady.  She,  thus,  never  crossed  the  true  path  either  of  Mrs. 
Siddons  or  of  Miss  Farren.  Comedies  supplying  two  first-rate 
parts  where  she  would  not  have  eclipsed  Mrs.  Siddons  being 
few,  Mrs.  Siddons  and  she,  so  long  contemporaneously  at  Drury 
Lane,  very  rarely  acted  together.  They  did  so  in  Pizarro,  and 
also  (Nov.  24th,  1797)  in  The  Rivals.  Mrs.  Tickell  contributed 
an  interesting  aside  on  Mrs.  Siddons,  when  she  wrote,  in  1785, 
that  Mrs.  Jordan  ought  to  "  make  a  sweet  tragedian,  because,  in 
Twelfth  Night,  her  voice  in  the  pathetic  is  musical  and  soft, 
and  she  has  the  Siddons  '  Oh ! '  in  perfection."  Mrs.  Jordan 
was  far  less  Euphrosyne  off  the  stage  than  on  it,  but,  across  the 
lamps,  no  one  ever  guessed  that  she  knew  nervousness,  depres- 
sion, or  annoyance.  In  her  maturity,  she  was  aware  of  her 
limitations.  "  If  the  public  had  any  taste,"  she  said,  in  the 
greenroom,  to  John  Taylor,  "how  could  they  bear  me  in 
the  part  [Rosalind]  which  ...  is  far  above  my  habits  and 
pretensions  ?  " 

For  twenty  years,  thanks  to  Mrs.  Jordan,  the  Duke  of 
Clarence  enjoyed  as  much  domestic  happiness  as  the  Royal 
Marriage  Act  permitted  to  him.  She  bore  her  sailor  prince 
five  sons  and  five  daughters,  and  shared  her  income  with  him, 
calling  the  provincial  tours  that  swelled  it  her  'cruises.'  Her 
dismissal,  in  1811,  was  due  to  no  fault  of  hers,  and  was 
attended  by  every  circumstance  of  respect.  Having  left 
England  to  avoid  creditors,  her  debts  being  the  consequence 
of  bills  given  by  her  to  relieve  her  worthless  son-in-law,  Alsop, 
Mrs.  Jordan  died,  on  July  3rd,  1816,  of  jaundice  and 
dejection. 

Little  needs  to  be  said  concerning  other  actresses  who 
flourished  during  Mrs.  Siddons's  prime.  The  career  of 
Harriot  Mellon  as  an  actress  was  infinitely  less  interesting 
than  as  a  woman.  She,  again,  was  Irish,  and  the  countrified, 
un-stagy  look  she  always  retained,  together  with  a  kind  of 
shy  boldness,  constituted  her  charm.  At  Liverpool,  in  the 
summer  of  1796,  Queen  Siddons  paid  her  the  supreme  com- 


1 76  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

pliment  of  leading  her  forward  by  the  hand,  and,  in  her  flat, 
forcible  way,  thus  addressing  the  assembled  company: 
"  Ladies  and  gentlemen,  I  am  told  by  one  I  know  very  well 
that  this  young  lady  for  years  in  his  father's  company  con- 
ducted herself  with  the  utmost  propriety.  I  therefore  intro- 
duce her  as  my  young  friend."  The  same  bounty  was 
afterwards  extended  to  the  same  actress  in  the  Drury  Lane 
greenroom.  It  was  a  standard  to  live  up  to. 

Miss  Mellon  was  Nature's  own  Audrey,  but  only  when 
more  eminent  actresses  were  ill  did  she  play  leading  business. 
On  the  other  hand,  romance  must  cling  to  the  memory  of 
one  who  (in  part,  by  her  constant  kindness  to  an  ill-tempered 
mother  and  beery  stepfather)  attracted  to  herself  a  fortune  of 
a  million  and  a  half.  She  married  Tom  Coutts,  he  eighty, 
she  thirty-eight;  twelve  years  later,  she  married  the  ninth 
Duke  of  St.  Albans,  he  twenty-six,  she  fifty.  She  believed  in 
luck,  and  was  born  lucky.  She  was  a  rattling,  coarse,  free- 
handed creature.  She  might  have  sat  to  Thackeray  for  the 
Fotheringay. 

Mrs.  Siddons  wrote,  in  1793,  concerning  a  once  celebrated 
actress,  "  The  charming  and  beautiful  Mrs.  Robinson !  I  pity 
her  from  the  bottom  of  my  soul."  Was  she  thinking  of 
Perdita's  arthritic  helplessness  and  suffering,  or  of  the  Florizel 
episode,  and  its  sequel?  As  we  have  seen,  she  thanked  God 
when  her  sister,  Frances,  was  safely  off  the  slippery  boards, 
and  she  roundly  (and,  surely,  too  sweepingly)  termed  the 
Drury  Lane  greenroom  of  her  time  'a  sink  of  iniquity.' 
Much  though  she  loved  her  art,  she  almost  overestimated 
the  danger  incurred  by  the  maid  who  unmasks  her  beauty 
to  the  playhouse. 

Considering  her  rather  judging  disposition,  only  too  few 
sentences  of  Mrs.  Siddons's  are  recorded  as  to  the  art  of 
other  players.  When  such  sentences  occur,  they  go  to  the 
root  of  the  matter,  as  where,  in  a  letter  to  Mrs.  Pennington, 
concerning  the  singer  to  whom,  in  Haydn's  opinion,  angels 
should  have  listened,  she  writes :  "  Mrs.  Billington  is  a  most 
surprising  creature,  but  her  talent  plays  only  round  the  head, 
without  ever  touching  the  heart."  Mrs.  Siddons  was  feelingly 
persuaded  of  the  truth  that  if  technique  is  the  body  of  art, 


PROMINENT  THEATRICAL  CONTEMPORARIES    177 

emotion    is    its    soul.      She    is   discriminating,   again,   in   the 
following  appraisement  of  a  male  fellow-player : — 

"The  Pierre  was  a  Mr.  Snow  (a  banker's  nephew)  whose 
stage  name  is  Hargrave :  he  is  a  sort  of  professional  amateur, 
with  a  good  figure,  and  may  do  better  hereafter;  but  at 
present  he  is  hard  and  dry:  the  wheels  of  his  passion  want 
oiling,  and  his  voice  is  harsh.  .  .  .  He  wants  to  play  Othello, 
but  I  fear  it  will  not  do :  he  would  be  more  fit  for  lago  with 
a  little  practice." 

Chief  of  those  who  passed  as  heirlooms  from  the  House 
of  Garrick  to  Sheridan's  Drury  Lane  was  Garrick's  right- 
hand  man,  Tom  King,  and  he  became  Mrs.  Siddons's  sincerest 
early  friend  there.  Within  his  scanty  plot  of  ground,  King 
was  an  exquisite  actor.  His  style  was  dry — brut  He  seemed 
made  to  uphold  sparkling  dialogue,  to  articulate  pointed 
epigram  and  neat  antithesis.  In  his  element  as  Touchstone, 
he  was  the  perfect  Lord  Ogleby  (in  Colman  and  Garrick's 
The  Clandestine  Marriage)^  and  he  shone  with  diamond  lustre 
in  the  tours  de  force  of  Sheridanean  comedy,  Puff  and  Sir 
Peter  Teazle.  He  made  the  regulation  forty  lines  of  every 
prologue  or  epilogue  he  uttered,  in  themselves,  'a  little 
drama.'  Off  the  boards,  he  was  an  agreeable  person  and 
a  gentleman,  and  at  his  house,  at  Hampton,  says  John 
Taylor,  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Siddons  and  Kemble  spent  some  of 
their  Christmas  holidays. 

After  Brereton's  breakdown,  the  second  line  in  tragedy 
at  Drury  Lane  was  filled  by  Bensley,  Wroughton,  Palmer, 
and  Barrymore.  In  Bensley  (unless  '  Carlagnulus '  nodded 
when  he  wrote  of  him)  there  must  have  been  a  streak  of 
greatness,  Wroughton  did  traditional  things  in  a  safe  way,  the 
others  acted  'with  much  exactness/  as  the  stereotype  of  the 
day  had  it,  though,  sometimes,  it  is  to  be  feared,  giving  their 
parts  more  mouth  than  passion. 

To  modern  ideas,  the  London  stage,  between  Henderson 
and  Kean,  would,  as  regarded  its  men-folk,  have  appeared 
better  supplied  on  the  comedy  than  the  tragedy  side.  The 
tragedians  were  hampered  by  a  formula,  or  convention,  which 
involved  a  'classic'  cadence  in  their  speech,  worlds  away 
from  the  tone  of  natural  conversation;  the  comedians,  on 
12 


OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY 

OF 

gAUFORti^^ 


i;8  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

the  other  hand,  drew  inspiration  solely  from  actuality.  It 
seems  safe  to  believe  that  a  modern  playgoer,  could  he  be 
transported  to  their  day,  would  carry  away  little  save  weariness 
from  an  evening  with  those  orotund  tragedians,  while  he 
would  derive  an  immense  amount  of  pleasure  from  such 
actors  as  the  gay,  efficient,  well-bred  William  Lewis,  the 
male  counterpart  of  Miss  Farren,  from  Elliston,  from  Jack 
Bannister,  from  Parsons,  from  Suett,  from  Munden,  from 
Liston,  and  from  Charles  Mathews.  Comedy,  in  that  age, 
was  in  what  John  Bernard  termed  a  plethora  of  health. 
Small  parts  were  taken  by  good  men,  and  hardly  a  varlet 
would  go  on  to  deliver  a  message  but  was  a  fellow  of  spirit 
and  intelligence. 

When  Kemble  entered  upon  the  Management  of  Covent 
Garden,  he  gave  a  conciliatory  dinner  at  his  own  house  to 
the  performers  who  were  to  be  under  his  command.  They 
numbered  some  of  the  time's  best  actors ;  among  them, 
George  Frederic  Cooke,  Lewis,  Mrs.  Davenport,  Mrs.  Mattocks, 
Mrs.  Beverley,  Mrs.  Glover,  Farley,  Hull,  Charles  Kemble, 
and  Mrs.  H.  Siddons.  The  Covent  Garden  company  accepted 
Kemble  unwillingly.  His  known  pride  and  authoritativeness 
of  bearing  prejudiced  them  against  him.  In  the  event,  he 
got  on  better,  even  with  the  unruly  and  insolent  G.  F.  Cooke, 
than  might  have  been  expected. 

Cooke  was  a  half-baked  Edmund  Kean.  He  had  none 
of  Kean's  refinement,  and  knew  little  beyond  the  slang  and 
bravado  of  tragedy.  He  hoped  to  be  the  rival  of  Kemble 
— '  Black  Jack/  who,  he  boasted,  would,  one  day,  '  tremble 
in  his  pumps'  on  his  account.  Possibly,  he  might  have 
outrivalled  Kemble,  had  he  combined  with  his  own  salience 
the  other's  idealism  and  sanity.  As  it  was,  he — of  whom, 
in  1 80 1,  young  Dermody  had  written  to  Sydney  Owenson, 
"Cooke  is  a  constellation,  the  everything,  the  rage" — came 
to  be  only  describable  as  a  drunken  genius. 

From  September,  1803,  to  May,  1810,  Cooke  acted,  on 
and  off,  with  Mrs.  Siddons  in  Macbeth,  Othello,  and  many 
other  plays,  but  her  opinion  of  him  is  not  recorded.  Like 
Macklin,  he  seemed  formed  for  sardonic  parts,  and  malignancy 
(as  in  I  ago  and  Shylock)  was  his  strength.  One  evening — 


PROMINENT  THEATRICAL  CONTEMPORARIES    179 

when  he  was  to  have  played  Douglas  to  Mrs.  Siddons's  Lady 
Randolph — found  him  so  flushed  with  the  grape,  as  they 
said  then,  that  young  Harry  Siddons  had  to  read  the  part 
for  him. 

In  considering  Cooke's  biography,  the  constant  wonder 
is  how  he  lived  as  long  as  he  did.  Hissed  and  degraded, 
he,  at  last,  drifted  to  the  provinces,  and  thence  to  the 
United  States.  In  1812,  he  died  in  New  York,  and  Kean, 
when  there  nine  years  later,  paid  for  a  monument  for  him 
on  which  was  inscribed, 

"   ...  In  various  parts  his  matchless  talents  shone ; 
The  one  he  fail'd  in,  was,  alas  !  his  own." 

The  selfsame  words  might  have  formed  Kean's  own  epitaph. 

It  is  an  interesting  speculation  as  to  whether  Mrs.  Siddons's 
temperament  required  other  good  actors  in  order  to  bring 
out  the  best  of  herself,  or  whether,  with  Rachel,  she  would 
have  said — or  thought — concerning  an  imbecile  cast,  "  Mon 
entourage  ria  ete  que  pour  me  mieux  faire  ressortir"  My  own 
impression  is  that,  though  she  appreciated  and  praised  good 
work  (especially  in  beginners,  and  in  her  own  autumn),  she 
was  rather  singularly  self-sufficient  in  her  acting,  and  inde- 
pendent of  the  people  around.  After  the  death  of  Henderson, 
George  III  understood  she  'had  wished  to  have  him  play 
at  the  same  house  with  herself.' 1 

Among  those  who  acted  with,  and  were  commended  by 
her,  Charles  Young  said  the  most  enthusiastic  and  well- 
judged  things  about  her.  There  is  small  need  to  give  the 
outlines  of  Young's  career,  since  that  little  masterpiece,  A 
Memoir  of  Charles  Mayne  Young,  by  the  actor's  son,  is  well 
known  to  general  readers.  Leaving  out  Gibber's  'Apology' 
— which  possesses  greater,  though  different  qualities — < 
Young's  biography  is  the  most  indispensable,  and  the 
wholesomest,  theatrical  memoir  that  exists,  completely  free 
from  banal  and  done-to-death  anecdotes.  If  ever  a  man 
helped,  by  his  private  life  and  character,  to  grace  the  stage, 
the  amiable,  high-hearted  Charles  Young  did  so. 

1  Diary  and  Letters  of  Madame  D'Arblay,  edited  by  Austin  Dobson,  ii.  343. 


i8o  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

When,  on  April  2ist,  1794,  Mrs.  Siddons  first  played 
Lady  Macbeth  in  Holland's  new  Drury  Lane,  under  Kemble's 
Management,  an  aiery  of  children  represented  the  black 
spirits  and  white,  red  spirits  and  grey,  and  among  them  was 
a  tiny  creature  named  Edmund  Kean.  In  1805,  when  Kean, 
then  eighteen,  was  a  stroller,  he  and  his  only  living  peer  again 
met,  at  Belfast,  on  the  boards.  Kean  was  Osmyn  to  the  star's 
Zara,  and  Norval  to  her  Lady  Randolph.  As  Osmyn,  he 
forgot  his  words,  and  Mrs.  Siddons,  guessing,  or  detecting, 
drink,  shook  her  head  gravely.  But  she  felt  his  latent  power. 
He  played,  she  said,  ' well,  very  well.'  This  was  the  only 
occasion  on  which  she  acted  with  that  unhappy  genius, 
before  whom,  it  was  said,  with  some  exaggeration,  Kemble 
'  faded  like  a  tragedy  ghost.' 

'The  small  man,  with  an  Italian  face  and  fatal  eye,' 
'  Mr.  Kean,  from  Exeter,'  did  not  get  his  chance  before  a 
London  audience  till  Mrs.  Siddons  had  been  eighteen 
months  retired.  From  the  testimony  of  eye-witnesses  who 
saw  both,  it  would  appear  that  he  made  the  same  tremendous 
attack  on  the  nerves  that  she  had  done. 

Soon  the  new  romantic  had  his  school  as  well  as  his  follow- 
ing, half  a  dozen  lesser  men  were  aping  his  instantaneous 
transitions  from  the  hyper-tragic  to  the  infra-colloquial,  and 
we  may  remember  how,  in  Pendennis,  Mr.  Manager  Bingley 
'darted  about  the  stage  and  yelled  like  Kean.'  By  virtue 
of  his  diametrically  opposite  methods,  it  was  inevitable  that 
Kean  should  now  be  pitted  against  Kemble,  as  Garrick  had,  at 
first,  been  pitted  against  Quin.  Mrs.  Trench  gives  a  glimpse 
of  Kean's  originality,  in  saying  that  her  children,  to  whom 
the  wailing  tragedians,  with  their  raised  voices,  made  Shake- 
speare practically  unintelligible,  enjoyed  every  word  spoken 
by  Kean — "his  tones  are  so  natural." 

For  eighteen  years,  the  prodigy  earned  £10,000  a  year 
— and,  in  1905,  Messrs.  Christie  sold  the  green  silk  purse 
Browning  gave  Irving,  which  had  been  found  in  Kean's 
pocket  without  a  sixpence  inside.  Byron  committed  to  his 
journal  for  February  2Oth,  1814,  a  reasonable  hope  that 
Kean,  by  getting  into  good  society,  would  be  prevented  from 
falling  like  Cooke.  But  the  mania  for  drink,  contracted 


PROMINENT  THEATRICAL  CONTEMPORARIES    181 

during  a  boyhood  of  semi-starvation,  proved  too  strong. 
Added  to  it,  there  seethed  in  Kean  something  not  unlike 
Swift's  sceva  indignatio>  a  madness  of  rage  against  things  as 
they  are.  One  of  the  saddest  letters  ever  written,  addressed 
by  Kean,  under  date,  1821,  to  'Dear  Jack'  Lee,  his  secretary, 
was  sold,  in  1906,  at  Messrs.  Sothebys'.  Thus  it  ran  : — 

"  I  have  been  mad  for  three  days,  imagined  that  all  my 
enemies  had  congregated  for  the  purpose  of  destruction, 
aided  by  demons,  riflemen,  and  rattlesnakes  —  excellent 
sport;  the  delirium  subsiding,  Death  placed  his  ugly  visage 
in  my  view.  I  have  been  very  drunk — very  often — once  so 
bad  that  I  could  scarcely  hobble  through  Macbeth.  Huzza ! 
boy — all  fun,  all  jollity,  all  good  fellowship,  but,  heart,  heart, 
when  wilt  thou  break  ?  " 

The  most  recently  living  actor  with  whom  Mrs.  Siddons 
appeared  was  William  Charles  Macready,  whose  hour-glass 
ran  till  1873.  He  and  Young  were  happily  associated  with 
John  and  Charles  Kemble  in  Lady  Blessington's  tribute, 
"  Were  I  called  on  to  name  the  professional  men  I  have 
known  most  distinguished  for  good  breeding  and  manners, 
I  should  name  four  tragedians — the  two  Kembles,  Young, 
and  Macready." 

Macready  was  a  youth  when,  in  1812,  just  before  her 
retirement,  Mrs.  Siddons  went  to  Newcastle  to  give  two 
performances  in  his  father's  theatre.  The  most  stimulating 
lesson  in  his  artistic  education  was  playing  with  her  on  these 
occasions.  The  Manager's  son,  as  junior  lead,  was  sent  to 
her  hotel  to  rehearse  Beverley  to  her  Mrs.  Beverley,  she 
fifty-seven,  her  stage  husband,  nineteen.  As  he  entered 
the  room  where  the  great  lady  awaited  him  with  her  stately 
daughter,  Cecilia,  his  nervousness  was  so  obvious  that,  to 
lighten  matters,  she  said,  in  her  elephantine  way,  "  I  hope, 
Mr.  Macready,  you  have  brought  some  hartshorn  and  water 
with  you,  as  I  am  told  you  are  terribly  frightened  at  me." 

In  the  evening,  on  the  stage,  when  his  first  scene  with 
her  commenced,  the  sensitive  novice  again  stood  for  a 
moment  petrified  by  her  presence,  but,  upon  her  kindly 
whispering  the  word,  he  was  able  to  proceed.  Before  long, 
he  caught  the  glow,  and  began  to  forget  self-consciousness, 


1  82  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

till,  in  the  last  scene,  as  Mrs.  Siddons  stood  by  the  side- 
wing,  waiting  her  entrance  cue,  he  uttered  a  crucial  sentence 
in  such  a  way  that  "she  raised  her  hands,  clapping  loudly, 
and  calling  out,  '  Bravo,  sir,  bravo  !  '  in  sight  of  part  of  the 
audience,  who  joined  in  her  applause. 

The  next  evening,  the  last  of  her  two-nights'  engagement, 
Mrs.  Siddons  played  Lady  Randolph,  and  Macready  was  her 
son.  Some  of  her  Newcastle  friends  had  written  beforehand  to 
her  to  beg  that  one  of  her  pieces  might  be  Douglas,  young 
Macready's  'years  and  ardour  suiting  so  well  the  part  of 
Norval.'  After  the  play  ended,  she  sent  for  him,  and  spoke 
the  following  valedictory  :  — 

"You  are  in  the  right  way,  but  remember  what  I  say, 
study,  study,  study,  and  do  not  marry  till  you  are  thirty.  I 
remember  what  it  was  to  be  obliged  to  study  at  nearly  your 
age  with  a  young  family  about  me.  Beware  of  that:  keep 
your  mind  on  your  art,  do  not  remit  your  study  and  you  are 
certain  to  succeed  .  .  .  study  well,  and  God  bless  you." 

Her  advice  to  the  player  —  which  might  be  paralleled  in  a 
letter  from  Garrick  to  Powell  —  fell  on  good  soil.  Macready 
(c  moral,  grave,  sublime/  as  Tennyson  called  him)  held  the 
highest  place  in  tragedy  for  nearly  a  quarter  of  a  century.  He 
consistently  traced  inspiration  to  Mrs.  Siddons. 

"  Her  words,"  he  said,  "  lived  with  me,  and  often  in 
moments  of  despondency  have  come  to  cheer  me.  Her  acting 
was  a  revelation  to  me,  which  ever  after  had  its  influence  on 
me  in  the  study  of  my  art.  Ease,  grace,  untiring  energy 
through  all  the  variations  of  human  passion,  blended  into  the 
grand  and  massive  style,  had  been  with  her  the  result  of 
patient  application.  On  first  witnessing  her  wonderful  imper- 
sonations I  may  say  with  the  poet  :  — 


"' 


Then  felt  I  like  some  watcher  of  the  skies 
When  a  new  planet  swims  into  his  ken.' 

"  And  I  can  only  liken  the  effect  they  produced  on  me,  in 
developing  new  trains  of  thought,  to  the  awakening  power 
that  Michael  Angelo's  sketch  of  the  Colossal  head  in  the 
Farnesina  is  said  to  have  had  on  the  mind  of  Raphael." 


XIV 
HER  HUSBAND  AND  CHILDREN 

WHAT  of  the  interior  at  14  Gower  Street,  and,  later, 
at  49  Great  Marlborough  Street?  Mrs.  Siddons's 
existence  was  at  the  farthest  remove  from  the 
masquerade  of  prank  and  vagary  a  citizen  imagination  associ- 
ates with  la  vie  d?  artiste.  Nursing  her  babies,  adding  up  her 
weekly  accounts,  eating  her  favourite  roast  beef,  this  Madame 
Sarah  showed  no  artistic  eccentricity  in  private  life.  One 
likes  to  think  of  gorgeous  Tragedy,  sitting  by  the  lamp-lit 
table,  surrounded  by  her  early  circle  of  pretty  faces  and 
youthful  talk — talk,  one  gathers  from  the  family  letters,  that 
would  not  have  '  strained  a  Boswell  to  bursting/  but  rilled  with 
affectionate  amenity  and  light-heartedness. 

It  is  doubtful  whether  'the  modern  student'  would  feel 
much  interest  in  Mr.  Siddons,  were  details  concerning  him 
thick  as  leaves  in  Vallombrosa.  They  are  not.  He  left  fewer 
traces  of  himself  in  written  record  than  the  consort  of  any 
celebrity  of  as  recent  a  period  as  Mrs.  Siddons's.  Five  plain, 
respectable  letters  by  him  are  to  be  found  in  Whalley's 
*  Journals  and  Correspondence/  and  four  or  five,  in  manuscript, 
in  the  Hardwicke  Papers,  and  among  the  British  Museum 
Sheridan  Correspondence.  It  transpires  that  he  was,  not 
exactly  a  nonentity,  but  undervitalised,  and  bounded  by  him- 
self. In  his  favour,  it  should  be  said  that,  however  unresist- 
ingly he  may  have  slid  into  the  habit  of  letting  his  wife 
support  him,  he  was  a  decent  liver,1  and  neither  ill-treated  her, 

1  I  have  seen  an  unpublished  letter,  of  1792,  from  Mrs.  Piozzi  to  Mrs.  Pennington, 
referring  to  some  scandal  about  Mr.  Siddons,  in  which  Mrs.  Siddons,  for  a  time, 
believed.  Taylor's  Records  of  my  Life,  ii.  85,  leads  one  to  imagine  that  the  scandal 
was  a  slander. 

183 


1 84  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

nor  gambled  away  her  earnings.  He  retired  from  the  stage, 
but,  says  Boaden,  only  because  he  was  too  mediocre  an 
actor  for  the  family's  credit;  he  lost  a  considerable  sum 
of  money,  made  by  Mrs.  Siddons,  over  the  part  proprietor- 
ship of  Sadler's  Wells  Theatre,  but,  there,  his  intentions  had 
been  meritorious.  It  needed  a  Phelps  to  make  'the  Wells 
pay. 

It  is  hard  for  a  man  to  play  perpetual  second  fiddle  to  a 
wife,  and  the  man  who  does  so  gracefully,  and  without  fore- 
going his  claims  to  respect,  must  be  gifted  with  some  hidden 
quality  surpassing  even  his  partner's  brilliancy.  It  may  be 
granted  that  Mrs.  Siddons's  prince  consort  was  fussy  and 
insignificant,  and,  as  a  consequence  of  his  subsidiary  position, 
occasionally  ill-humoured,  but,  on  the  whole,  he  seems  to  have 
sustained  the  role  of  Melpomene's  husband  with  reasonable 
sense  and  taste.  He  was  an  actor — and  he  had  to  undergo 
the  humiliation  of  not  acting,  and  of  seeing  his  better  half 
play  her  great  parts  supported  by  her  brother.  Something, 
in  addition,  may  be  urged  for  him  on  the  score  that  a  wife 
vowed  (as  his  was)  to  the  exclusive  worship  of  her  own  relations 
is  a  cross  for  any  man.  Altogether  unamiable  he  could  not 
have  been,  since  he  was  liked,  as  well  as  esteemed,  by  a 
brother-in-law.  "  The  confidence  between  Mr.  S.  and  my 
Brother  is  unbounded,"  writes  Mrs.  Siddons,  in  a  letter  of 
1798.  It  was  inevitable  that  he  should  not  be  named  in  the 
diaries  of  eminent  individuals  who  recorded  having  met  Mrs. 
Siddons  out  dining.  In  Windham's  Diary,  under  May  15th, 
1791,  we  may,  however,  read  that  the  writer,  having  called, 
and  found  Mrs.  Siddons  out,  "sat  some  time  with  Mr. 
Siddons." 

Like  other  subordinate  husbands,  *  Sid '  talked  lengthily  of 
his  wife.  That  he  had  some  sense  of  humour,  and  could 
even  '  pull '  an  interlocutor's  '  leg,'  seems  evidenced  by  a  speech 
the  late  Mr.  James  Dibdin  reports  him  as  making  to  Dr. 
Mackenzie  of  Portpartick.  "  Do  you  know  ?  "  he  asked,  "  that 
small  beer  is  good  for  crying  ?  The  day  that  my  wife  drinks 
small  beer,  she  cries  amazingly;  she  is  really  pitiful.  But  if 
I  was  to  give  her  porter,  or  any  stronger  liquor,  she  would 
not  be  worth  a  farthing." 


MRS.   SIDDONS'S   HUSBAND 


HER  HUSBAND  AND  CHILDREN  185 

When  the  Lawrence  troubles  thickened  round  his  daughters, 
Mr.  Siddons,  as  a  counsellor  and  helper,  left  something  to  be 
desired.  He  was,  said  his  wife,  so  harsh  and  repelling  that 
confidence,  on  their  part  and  hers,  was  alienated.  Most 
likely,  he  forgot  he  had  once  been  young.  Messrs.  Allen 
permit  me  to  quote  a  letter,  in  which  Mrs.  Siddons,  scarified, 
at  the  time,  by  'briery  Circumstance/  and  exasperated  by 
her  husband's  attitude,  reveals  his  shortcomings  to  Mrs. 
Pennington — 

"You  desir'd  me  to  tell  you  how  Mr.  S.  received  the 
information  which  I  told  you  had  been  communicated ;  with 
that  coldness  and  reserve  which  had  kept  him  so  long  ignorant 
of  it,  and  that  want  of  an  agreeing  mind  (my  misfortune,  though 
not  his  faulty  that  has  always  check'd  my  tongue  and  chilled 
my  heart,  in  every  occurrence  of  importance  thro*  our  lives. 
No,  it  is  not  his  fault,  it  is  his  nature.  Nay,  he  wou'd  never 
have  hinted  to  Sally  anything  of  the  matter,  if  I  had  not 
earnestly  represented  to  him  how  strange  such  reserve  must 
appear  to  her ;  whereupon  he  testified  his  total  disapprobation, 
nay,  abhorrence  of  any  further  intercourse  with  Mr.  L[awrence], 
whom  he  reprobated  with  the  spirit  of  a  just  man  ABOVE  the 
WEAKNESSES  which  are  the  misfortunes  of  the  Race  in 
general." 

Probably,  the  sympathies  of  '  Sid '  and  Sally — so  John 
Kemble  familiarly  named  the  pair — were  not  more  imperfect 
than  Sir  Walter  and  Lady  Scott's.  A  good  deal  has  been 
made  of  their  '  separation/  of  which  the  malignant  Mrs.  Galindo 
gives  the  date — October,  1804.  Mr.  Siddons's  ever-increasing 
rheumatism  had  long  before  decided  him  in  favour  of  Bath  as 
an  abiding-place.  Cecilia,  his  ten-year-old  daughter,  was  at 
Bath,  at  the  Miss  Lees'  school,  Belvedere  House;  his  other 
children  were  dead,  or  scattered.  He  had  little  in  common 
with  his  wife's  fashionable  set.  He  was  inured  to  her  absences 
on  tour,  and  she,  though,  hitherto,  she  had  nursed  him  through 
severe  rheumatic  attacks,  was  too  busy  to  miss  him.  So  to 
Bath  he  went,  and  he  and  Mrs.  Siddons  paid  each  other,  from 
time  to  time,  visits  of  considerable  length. 

A  significant  letter,  of  December  i6th,  1804,  given  by 
Campbell,  from  Mrs.  Siddons  to  her  husband,  after  their 


1 86  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

so-called  separation,  concerning  his  ultimate  disposition  of  their 
property,  runs  as  follows  : — 

"  MY  DEAR  SID, — I  am  really  sorry  that  my  little  flash  of 
merriment  should  have  been  taken  so  seriously,  for  I  am  sure, 
however  we  may  differ  in  trifles,  we  can  never  cease  to  love 
each  other.  You  wish  me  to  say  what  I  expect  to  have  done 
— I  can  expect  nothing  more  than  you  yourself  have  designed 
me  in  your  will.  Be  (as  you  ought  to  be)  the  master  of  all 
while  God  permits,  but,  in  case  of  your  death,  only  let  me 
be  put  out  of  the  power  of  any  person  living.  This  is  all 
that  I  desire ;  and  I  think  that  you  cannot  but  be  convinced 
that  it  is  reasonable  and  proper. — Your  ever  affectionate  and 
faithful  S.  S." 

This  undemanding  letter  in  itself  gives  evidence  of  the 
simplicity  and  sincerity  of  its  writer. 

Mrs.  Siddons  was  in  Bath  during  February,  1808.  In  the 
Bath  Herald,  for  Saturday,  February  6th,  I  read:  "at  the 
Theatre  Royal  Last  night  but  two  Mrs.  Siddons  in  the  Tragedy 
of  Venice  Preserved";  in  the  same,  for  February  nth:  "Mary 
Queen  of  Scots.  Queen  Mary  by  Mrs.  Siddons  Positively  the 
last  night  of  her  performing  here."  On  the  following  March 
nth,  William  Siddons  died,  unexpectedly — "as  he  had  prayed 
to  die,  without  a  sigh,"  Mrs.  Siddons  told  Lady  Harcourt.  In 
the  Bath  Journal,  for  Monday,  March  I4th,  one  may  read: 
"  Friday  died  at  his  Lodgings  in  this  City  William  Siddons,  esq : 
the  very  worthy  and  affectionate  husband  of  the  justly  celebrated 
Mrs.  Siddons.  Though  long  an  invalid  dissolution  may  be 
said  to  have  been  sudden  as  he  had  passed  the  preceding 
evening  with  a  circle  of  friends  in  his  usual  social  and  pleasant 
manner."  The  Bath  Chronicle,  in  its  next  issue,  practically 
copied  the  Journal  notice,  and  a  similar  item  appeared  in  the 
Bath  Herald.  The  address  of  Siddons's  lodgings  is  not  given 
in  any  of  these  newspapers.  In  the  Bath  Abbey  Register,  an 
entry  reads,  "William  Siddons  was  buried  on  March  16,  1808." 
In  1908,  Miss  Harriot  Siddons  and  her  brother,  Mr.  Henry  G. 
I.  Siddons,  grandchildren  of  Mrs.  Siddons's  second  son,  George, 
placed  a  tablet  in  Bath  Abbey  to  William  Siddons's  memory. 
It  seems  unlikely  that  Mrs.  Siddons  should  have  erected  no 
monument  over  her  husband's  grave;  one  can  only  suppose 


HER  HUSBAND  AND  CHILDREN  187 

that  the  original  stone  has  been  moved,  and  lost,  during  one 
of  the  changes  effected  in  the  Abbey  in  the  course  of  the 
intervening  century.  The  present  tablet  bears  for  inscription : 
"Sacred  to  the  Memory  of  William  Siddons  Esq:  who  died 
at  Bath,  nth  March,  1808." 

His  bleakness  and  untowardness  now  forgotten,  William 
Siddons's  widow  wrote  of  his  death,  two  or  three  weeks  after 
it  occurred,  to  Mrs.  Piozzi : — 

"...  I  shall  feel  it  longer  than  I  shall  speak  of  it.  May 
I  die  the  death  of  my  honest,  worthy  husband,  and  may 
those  to  whom  I  am  dear  remember  me  ...  as  I  remember 
him,  forgiving  all  my  errors,  and  recollecting  only  my  quietness 
of  spirit  and  singleness  of  heart." 

Since  Mrs.  Siddons  was  bread-winner  and  mother  both,  she, 
necessarily,  had  to  leave  her  girls,  when  children,  and,  later, 
when  invalids,  under  other  feminine  care  than  her  own,  while 
she  was  away,  earning  for  their  wants.  In  the  direction  of 
practical  thought  for  them,  and  care  for  their  future,  this 
great  artist  was  every  inch  a  mother.  When,  in  1786,  Whalley 
named  to  her  his  apprehensions  of  some  undesirable  marriage 
threatening  his  pretty  niece,  she  responded — "You  could  not 
speak  to  one  who  understands  those  anxieties  you  mention 
better  than  I  do."  Later,  when  her  girls  were  'out,'  she 
encouraged  eligible  young  men,  but,  at  this  date,  Sally  was 
only  eleven,  and  Maria  seven.  Mrs.  Siddons's  sixth  and 
youngest  child  was  born,  it  should  be  noted,  twenty  years 
later  than  her  eldest. 

Mrs.  Siddons  belonged  to  the  type  of  mothers  who  frankly 
admire  their  children,  and  love  to  discourse  of  them.  On  four 
separate  occasions,  she  wrote  to  Whalley — 

in  1785,  "Sarah  is  an  elegant  creature,  and  Maria  is  as 
beautiful  as  a  seraphim.  Harry  grows  very  awkward,  sensible 
and  well-disposed," 

in  1786  (January),  when  George  was  newly  born,  she 
described  him  as  "  healthy  and  lovely  as  an  angel,"  and — this 
was  her  joke — "  very  like  the  Prince  of  Wales  ! " 

in  1786  (August),  "  My  .  .  .  children  are  .  .  .  well,  clever, 
and  lovely," 

(October)  "...  Sally  is  vastly  clever;  Maria  and  George 


1 88  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

are  beautiful ;  and  Harry  a  boy  with  very  good  parts,  but 
not  disposed  to  learning."  l 

In  1794,  Amelia  Alderson,  afterwards  Opie's  wife,  wrote  to 
Norwich,  from  London,  that  she  had  been  to  Marlborough 
Street,  and  found  Mrs.  Siddons  nursing  her  baby  (Cecilia — 
the  sixth  baby)  and  "as  handsome  and  charming  as  ever." 
The  unmarried  lady  added,  "  The  baby  is  all  a  baby  can  be, 
but  Mrs.  S.  laughs,  and  says  it  is  a  wit  and  a  beauty  already 
in  her  eyes." 

Shortly  after  her  1782  re-entry  into  London,  Mrs.  Siddons 
sent  Harry  to  Dr.  Barrow's  Academy  in  Soho  Square.  After 
a  few  months  there,  he  passed,  on  Queen  Charlotte's  nomi- 
nation, into  the  Charterhouse,  where  he  remained  five  years. 
1 '  Boys,"  observed  Mrs.  Siddons,  speaking  particularly  of  her 
second,  George,  afterwards  the  Indian  Civil  Servant,  "are 
noisy  creatures  compared  to  girls."  She  frequently  changed 
her  daughters'  schools,  though  keeping  mostly  to  Bath  as  their 
locality — this  was  long  before  Mrs.  Twiss  opened  at  24  Camden 
Place.  In  the  early  part  of  1789,  Sally  and  Maria  were  de- 
posited by  their  parents  at  Mrs.  Semple's  finishing-school  at 
Calais,  where  they  appeared  to  have  stayed  about  three  years. 

Thanks  to  their  mother's  genius,  there  was  no  need  to 
train  them  for  wage-earning.  One  might  have  said  that  the 
unoccupied  existences  they  were  allowed  to  lead  as  young, 
grown-up  girls  could  not  have  conduced  to  health  of  body 
or  mind,  but  that  a  sentence  which  occurs,  in  1797,  in  one 
of  Mr.  Siddons's  letters  to  Whalley,  "  Sally  ...  has  had  the 
worst  fit  I  ever  knew,  and  is  still  very  ill,"  suggests  a  reason 
for  Mrs.  Siddons's  tacitly  judging  their  already  asthmatic 
elder  daughter  incapable  of  a  professional  life.  A  statement, 
singular  in  both  senses,  occurs  in  Mrs.  Papendiek's  Remini- 
scences, miscalled  '  Journals,'  to  the  effect  that  Maria  was 
expected  to  appear,  at  Drury  Lane,  apparently,  early  in  1790(1) 
as  Lessing's  Emilia  Galotti.  Mrs.  Papendiek  (whom  Mrs. 
Raine  Ellis  well  summarised  as  'gossipping  and  credulous 
of  gossip ')  goes  on  to  allege  that  Maria  has,  previously, 
greatly  shone,  as  Lessing's  heroine,  in  Stanmore  Priory 
theatricals,  that  a  brilliant  success  was  anticipated,  but  that 

1  Appendix  A. 


HER  HUSBAND  AND  CHILDREN  189 

Mrs.  Siddons,  ostensibly  on  account  of  Maria's  youthfulness 
and  delicacy,  and  really  from  fear  of  being  outrivalled,  with- 
drew her  daughter's  name  just  before  her  debut.  In  support 
of  these  assertions,  there  was,  certainly,  in  Drury  Lane 
announcements,  of  October,  1794,  mention  of  '  a  Young  Lady ' 
to  play  Emilia  Galotti  as  'her  first  appearance  on  any  Stage/ 
but,  on  the  other  hand,  this  description  was  justified,  on  the 
night  of  the  production,  in  the  person  of  Miss  Miller.  Pro- 
bably, Mrs.  Papendiek's  canard  grew  out  of  nothing  more 
tangible  than  somebody's  surmise  (dimly  recollected  across  a 
forty  years'  interval)  that  the  'Young  Lady'  might  prove  a 
Miss  Siddons.  The  remainder  of  the  space  the  'Journals' 
devotes  to  the  Siddons  family  is  an  amusing  tissue  of  error. 

Beauty  both  Mrs.  Siddons's  daughters  possessed.  Maria 
was  the  lovelier,  but  Sally's  face  had  more  of  the  interest 
of  character.  An  enchanting  trio,  indeed,  they  and  Mrs. 
Siddons— -fili<z  pulchrcz^  mater  pulchrior — must  have  appeared 
when  they  entered  a  room  together,  and  it  cannot  be  wondered 
at  that  the  man  of  the  most  marked  artistic  sensibility  of 
any  living  in  England  at  that  time  found  his  imagination 
enchained  by  this  conjoint  vision  of  grace  and  charm  that 
represented  the  Siddons-Kemble  '  type.'  Thomas  Lawrence, 
A.R.A.,  afterwards  Sir  Thomas  Lawrence,  P.R.A.,  commenced 
his  strange,  febrile  relations  with  the  Siddons  family  by 
becoming,  in  the  first  instance,  the  follower  of  Sally.  Mr. 
Knapp's  Pennington  and  Bird  letters  invalidate  the  order 
of  the  data  of  the  Lawrence  drama  given  in  Record  of  a 
Girlhood.  So  few  persons  knew,  at  the  time,  what  was  taking 
place  as  to  Lawrence's  successive  volte-face  that  it  is  small 
wonder  that  Fanny  Kemble,  who  had  no  documents,  and  was 
born  long  after  both  Miss  Siddons  were  dead,  saw  through  a 
glass  darkly. 

Aged  twenty-six,  Lawrence,  at  about  1795,  was  handsome, 
polished,  and  fascinating.  From  the  moment  he  settled  in 
London,  he  struck  at  the  highest  quarry,  and,  says  Mrs. 
Inchbald,  in  her  plain  way,  "his  plan  demanded  ample  pre- 
mises, which  in  good  situations  are  expensive  to  the  rising 
artist."  He  took  up  his  quarters  in  Greek  Street,  Soho,  near 
the  Siddonses  in  Great  Marlborough  Street. 


190  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

To  people  of  to-day  it  is  obvious  how  low,  compared  with 
Reynolds's  level,  was  the  level  on  which  his  over-elegant, 
over-facile  successor  painted.  Lawrence's  best  work  lies  in  his 
delicate,  expressive  outline  drawings,  as  to  which  Elizabeth, 
Duchess  of  Devonshire,  wrote  to  him,  "  I  know  that  your 
drawings  are  finer  than  anything  known,"  and  it  is  difficult 
to  think  that  the  same  hand  drew  the  captivating  heads  of 
Mrs.  Siddons,  reproduced  in  Mr.  Knapp's  book,  and,  only  a 
little  later,  painted  the  full-length  of  her  that  hangs  on  the 
staircase  of  the  National  Portrait  Gallery  with  its  too  ruddy 
complexion,  its  badly  hung,  over-stalwart  arms.  What 
Lawrence  lacked  was  the  austerity  of  taste,  and  of  mind, 
generally,  which,  by  enabling  a  painter  to  govern  his  art, 
makes  him  great. 

During  his  passages  with  the  Siddons  family,  we  see  him, 
in  some  of  his  letters,  so  melodramatic,  so  bullying,  as  to 
recall  someone's  bitter  opinion  of  Canning,  viz.  that  he 
could  '  never  be  a  gentleman  for  more  than  three  hours  at 
a  time.'  Nevertheless,  this  was  far  from  the  impression  Law- 
rence made,  when  out  of  love.  People,  in  general,  found  his 
manners  gentle,  and,  in  spite  of  his  obscure  origin  and  personal 
pretensions,  retiring  rather  than  assertive.  Benjamin  Haydon's 
'obituary'  comment  on  him  that  he  had  smiled  so  often  and 
so  long  that  at  last  his  smile  had  the  appearance  of  being 
set  in  enamel  is  well  known.  Less  frequently  quoted  is 
Haydon's  earlier  description  (in  a  magazine  article  entitled 
'  Somniator's  other  Vision ')  of  Lawrence  being  turned — by 
Michael  Angelo's  ghost! — into  a  bottle  of  sweet  oil,  whereas 
Northcote  is  transformed  into  a  gilded  viper,  and  Fuseli  sent 
straight  to  hell.  The  general  verdict  pronounced  Lawrence 
too  suave. 

He  was  that  combination  of  susceptibility  and  attractive- 
ness which  makes  a  man,  almost  involuntarily,  a  flirt.  He 
whole-heartedly  desired  to  marry  Sally  Siddons,  and,  for  her, 
wore  mourning  till  his  death.  Yet  he  confessed  to  the  Charles 
Kembles  that  he  had,  subsequently,  been  deeply  in  love  with 
the  beautiful  Mrs.  Wolff,  while,  when  he  died  of  ossification 
of  the  heart,  still  another  lady  put  on  widow's  weeds  for  him. 
He  was  even  implicated  in  '  the  delicate  investigation '  con- 


HER  HUSBAND  AND  CHILDREN  191 

cerning  the  conduct  of  the  Princess  of  Wales.  "  He  could 
not  write  a  common  answer  to  a  dinner  invitation  without 
its  assuming  the  tone  of  a  billet-doux ",  the  very  commonest 
conversation  was  held  in  that  soft  low  whisper  and  with 
that  tone  of  deference  and  interest  which  are  so  unusual  and 
so  calculated  to  please." 

It  would  be  clear  that  the  Miss  Siddons  must  have  been 
in  every  way  adequate  from  the  fact  that  such  a  man  gave 
them  burning  adoration.  One  all  but  arrives,  indeed,  at  the 
conclusion  that  he  was  in  love  with  the  whole  family,  and 
the  whole  family  with  him.  The  works  which  established  his 
reputation  were  portraits  of  the  Kembles,  and  the  last  sketch 
he  ever  perfected  was  that  of  Fanny  Kemble.  Who  can  doubt 
that  the  image  of  Mrs.  Siddons  warmed  his  imagination  from 
the  day  when,  '  JE*  13,'  he  drew  her  portrait  at  Bath? 
He  was  fourteen  years  her  junior,  but  every  actress  is  one 
to  two  decades  younger  than  her  years.  It  need  no  more 
astonish  us  if  sundry  living  people  maintain  that  he  was, 
deep  down,  in  love  with  her,  while  supposing  himself 
enamoured,  successively,  of  her  daughters,  than  that,  in  her 
day,  evil  thinkers  invented  slander  to  which  the  following 
reference  is  made,  in  a  letter  written,  in  1810,  by  the  Princess 
of  Wales:  "The  report  about  Mrs.  Siddons  and  Lawrence 
I  always  thought  most  shameful,  and  never  believed  it,  and 
rejoice  that  it  is  proved  to  be  false." 1 

When  Lawrence  was  sixty,  Fanny  Kemble,  then  twenty, 
declared  herself  on  the  way  to  being  in  love  with  him,  and, 
since  she  was  a  Kemble,  exercised  over  him,  in  her  minor 
measure,  the  old  spell.  "  Oh !  she  is  very  like  her  [i.e.  Maria]  : 
she  is  very  like  them  all,"  he  murmured,  as  he  gazed  at  the 
portrait  he  had  just  made  of  her.  It  is  significant  that,  when 
he  sent  her  a  proof-plate  of  Reynolds's  '  Tragic  Muse,'  with 
the  inscription,  "This  portrait,  by  England's  greatest  painter, 
of  the  noblest  subject  of  his  pencil,  is  presented  to  her  niece 
and  worthy  successor,  by  her  most  faithful  humble  friend  and 
servant,  Lawrence,"  he  afterwards  sent  for  the  picture,  and 
erased  the  words,  "  and  worthy  successor."  His  secretary  told 

1  Diary  [by  Lady  Charlotte  Bury]  Illustrative  of  the  Times  of  George  tke  Fourth, 
iv.  63,  see  also  ii.  71,  1838. 


1 92  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

Fanny  that  Lawrence  had  the  print  lying,  with  the  inscription, 
in  his  drawing-room  for  several  days  before  sending  it  to  her, 
and  had  said  to  him,  "  Cover  it  up ;  I  cannot  bear  to  look  at 
it."  The  most  touching  fact  of  all  is  that  when,  after  years 
of  severance  (for,  in  spite  of  a  few  wistful  letters  written  to 
him  as  necessary  occasions  arose,  she  did  not  resume  the  old 
friendly  relations  after  Sally's  death1)  Mrs.  Siddons  felt  not 
far  from  her  end,  she  said  to  her  brother,  "  Charles,  when  I  die, 
I  wish  to  be  carried  to  my  grave  by  you  and  Lawrence." 
"  Good  God  !  did  she  say  that  ?  "  exclaimed  Lawrence,  when 
told.  Her  wish  could  not  be  fulfilled,  for  Sir  Thomas  pre- 
deceased by  eighteen  months  her  he  had  called  '  the 
Immortal.' 

I  should  have  shrunk  from  even  approaching  the  ground 
Mr.  Oswald  G.  Knapp  made  his  own  by  his  admirable  mani- 
pulation, in  An  Artist's  Love  Story ,  of  two  unpublished 
collections  of  Siddons  correspondence — 1797-1803 — one  his, 
the  other — through  him — Miss  Grazebrook's  gift  to  the  public, 
but  that,  realising  how  incomplete  the  present  chapter  would 
be  without  much  reference  to  them,  I  wrote  to  him,  and,  in  reply, 
received  the  kindest  permission,  which  Messrs.  George  Allen 
&  Sons,  the  publishers  of  the  book,  were  so  good  as  to  ratify, 
to  avail  myself  of  these  letters.  An  Artist's  Love  Story  tells, 
straight  from  the  facts,  one  of  those  '  incredible  '  double  dramas 
of  family  history  that  only  occasionally,  as  here,  reach  their 
logical  conclusion  in  tragedy,  desperately  piteous,  full  of  the 
cruelty  and  waste  of  nature.  It  is  absorbing,  from  the  emotional 
intensity  that  breathes  through  every  letter  of  these  dmes 
delite,  and  no  one  can  read  it  without  catching  some  sense 
of  that  dependent  affection,  almost  idolatry,  which  Mrs. 
Siddons  inspired  in  her  daughters  and  intimate  friends. 

During  1795,  Lawrence — who,  for  some  little  time,  had 
been  attached,  though  not,  so  far,  openly  plighted,  to  Sally 
Siddons,  then  about  twenty — began,  by  moods  of  alternating 
gloom  and  violence,  to  evince  that  something  was  wrong.  At 
last,  he  confessed  to  Mrs.  Siddons  that  he  found  he  loved 
Maria,  the  bud  of  sixteen,  better  than  Sally.  This  was  a 

1  He  was  so  dilatory  a  painter  that  the  fact  of  his  exhibiting  the  Fitzhugh  full- 
length  portrait  of  her  in  the  1804  Academy  proves  nothing. 


HER  HUSBAND  AND  CHILDREN  193 

painful  situation  for  Sally,  who  had  reciprocated  his  devotion, 
but,  being  a  temperate,  high-minded  girl,  the  worthy  daughter 
of  her  mother,  she  accepted  the  inevitable  with  fortitude  and 
smiles,  and,  continuing  to  keep  the  fact  of  Lawrence's  original 
courtship  of  her  as  much  a  secret  from  all  but  Mrs.  Siddons 
and  Maria  as,  up  to  the  present,  it  was,  she  stood  aside,  while 
Lawrence  pressed  upon  all  concerned  his  zeal  to  become  the 
affianced  of  her  younger  sister.  It  was  in  the  nature  of  things 
that  he  should  have  his  way,  and,  by  the  commencement  of 
1798,  the  engagement  was  sanctioned,  though  there  were  serious 
objections,  chief  among  them  Maria's  fragility  of  constitution. 
Already,  a  doctor  had  breathed  the  word,  consumption,  as 
being  a  menace,  but  the  family,  like  other  families  similarly 
threatened,  had  every  hope  that  her  '  youth,  and  the  unremitting 
attention  paid  her'  would  conquer.  Up  to  this  time,  Maria 
seems  to  have  been  less  frequently  troubled  with  illness  than 
her  elder  sister,  for  Sally  was  subject  to  spasmodic  asthma, 
and  rarely  free,  for  more  than  three  weeks  at  a  time,  from  a 
prostrating  attack  of  it. 

The  family,  as  a  family,  was  more  or  less  pulmonary.  John 
Kemble  was  badly  troubled  with  asthma,  and  Sally  and  Maria's 
brother,  Henry,  eventually  died  of  phthisis. 

Maria  had  short  joy  of  her  contract.  Before  six  weeks 
were  out,  Lawrence  made  it  known  to  her,  her  mother,  and 
Sally  that,  in  spite  of  his  former  recantation,  he  loved  Sally, 
and  Sally  alone.  Perhaps,  it  was  never  the  individual  that 
swayed  him,  but  the  type.  At  any  rate,  this  was  his  final 
return.  Whether  Maria  had  proved  more  trivial,  and,  there- 
fore, less  lovable,  than  Sally,  or  whether  her  rapidly  developing 
malady  (which  had  begun  to  necessitate,  according  to  the 
coddling  doctrine  of  the  day,  confinement  to  the  house  during 
the  winter)  rendered  her  exacting  and  unamusing,  one  cannot 
know. 

Decorum  made  it  impossible  for  Sally  to  give  her  definite, 
overt  consent  to  marry  the  man  who  had  now  played  fast  and 
loose  with  them  both.  That  she  avowedly  loved  him  two 
letters  she  wrote  him,  presently  to  be  quoted,  show. 

With  an  instinctive  reaching  towards  self-justification,  she 
laid  the  unction  to  her  soul  that  Maria's  "heart  could  never 
'3 


194  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

have  been  deeply  engag'd."  That  the  wish  was  here  parent 
to  the  thought  is  evidenced  by  the  following,  in  a  letter  from 
Maria  herself  to  Miss  Bird,  dated  March  I4th: — 

"  I  have  been  quite  ill  again.  ...  I  yet  think  I  shall  not 
live  a  long  while  .  .  .  and  I  see  nothing  very  shocking  in 
the  idea.  ...  I  may  be  sav'd  from  much  misery  .  .  .  and  in 
my  short  life  I  have  known  enough  to  be  sick  to  death  of  it. 
You  know  I  suppose  the  cause  of  too  much  of  this  misery 
.  .  .  but  I  have  determin'd  to  be  silent." 

On  April  8th,  commenting  on  the  success  of  The  Stranger^ 
the  poor  child  writes:  "...  is  it  not  strange  one  should  like 
to  cry  ?  as  if  there  was  not  enough  of  it  in  reality." 

At  the  breaking  of  the  Maria  engagement,  Lawrence's 
visits  to  Great  Marlborough  Street  ceased.  In  the  Nineteenth 
Century  of  April,  1905,  Lady  Priestley  laid  open  two  letters 
Sally  addressed  to  him  during  the  tense  period  that  immediately 
followed,  and  from  these  the  editor  of  the  Nineteenth  Century 
allows  me  to  quote.  In  the  first,  Sally  wrote : — 

"You  cannot  be  in  earnest  when  you  talk  of  being  soon 
again  in  Marlborough  Street.  .  .  .  Neither  you,  nor  Maria, 
nor  I  could  bear  it.  Do  you  think  that,  tho'  she  does  not 
love  you,  she  would  feel  no  unpleasant  sensations  to  see  those 
attentions  paid  to  another  which  once  were  hers  ?  Could  you 
bear  to  pay  them,  could  I  endure  receiving  them  ?  .  .  .  Nobody 
need  know  what  passes ;  from  me  they  certainly  will  not.  I 
will  try  to  make  myself  easy,  since  my  conduct  is  no  secret 
to  her  [Mrs.  Siddons]  whose  approbation  is  as  dear  to  me  as 
my  life ;  but  I  shall  have  much  to  endure  ..." 

The  remark  as  to  Sally's  mother's  attitude  towards  the 
complication  is  interesting.  Mrs.  Siddons  has  been  called 
vacillating,  and  even  cowardly,  in  her  relations  with  Lawrence, 
and,  no  doubt,  the  glamour  he  projected,  from  first  to  last,  over 
her  imagination  had  much  to  do  with  her  indulgence,  her  sub- 
missiveness  towards  him.  Habituated  as  she  was  to  the  ravings 
of  Romeos  and  Jaffiers,  the  ravings  of  Lawrence  did  not  disgust 
her  as  they  would  have  disgusted  a  more  ordinary  matron. 
The  artist  in  her  unfailingly  went  out  to  this  other,  younger, 
different  kind  of  artist,  a  man  who  to  herself  was  almost  a 
lover.  And  it  is  difficult  to  see  how  so  sympathetic  a  mother 


MARIA   SIDDONS 


HER  HUSBAND  AND  CHILDREN  195 

could,  at  this  juncture,  have  denied  Sally  all  chance  of  the 
happiness  on  which  her  heart  was  set,  because  Lawrence  had, 
for  a  time,1  'mistaken  his  feelings1  at  Maria's  expense. 
Mrs.  Siddons  erred  in  concealing  from  her  husband  Lawrence's 
new  apostasy.  She  went  so  far  as  to  request  Mrs.  Pennington, 
when  enclosing  Lawrence's  letters,  to  address  to  her  maid,  Sally 
Briggs,  'lest  they  should  fall  into  improper  hands'  [i.e.  Mr. 
Siddons's].2  Her  pusillanimity  left  her  too  much  in  the  power 
of  a  man  whose  temperament  was  '  artistic '  rather  than  manly. 
Each  partaker,  indeed,  in  this  chamber  drama,  with  the  possible 
exception  of  Sally  Siddons,  seems  to  have  shared  the  tendency 
of  the  theatrical  temperament  to  make  much  of  small,  and  little 
of  great  issues. 

In  the  second  letter,  posted  on  April  24th,  Sally,  her  affection 
intensified  by  having  met  Lawrence  the  previous  evening, 
wrote : — 

"...  I  will  tell  you  more  on  Thursday.  Yes,  I  will  tell  you  ; 
for  if  it  is  fine  I  mean  to  walk  before  breakfast  ...  I  shall  be 
in  Poland  Street  before  nine.  You  have  a  key  of  Soho  Square : 
shall  we  walk  there  ?  Oh  time,  time,  fly  quickly  till  Thursday 
morning !  .  .  . 

"...  Have  you  taken  your  ring  to  Cowen's  ?  .  .  .  Have  they 
told  you  it  is  a  TRUE  LOVER'S  KNOT  ?  I  bought  it  for  you,  I 
have  worn  it,  kissed  it,  and  waited  anxiously  for  an  opportunity 
to  give  it  you.  Last  night,  beyond  my  hopes,  it  presented 
itself.  You  have  it.  Keep  it,  love  it,  nor  ever  part  with  it  till 
you  return  me  my  letters" 

It  had  been  arranged  that  Lawrence  was  to  return  Sally's 
letters  should  he  ever  love  elsewhere. 

Like  her  cousin,  Fanny  Arkwright,  Sally  was  a  musical 
composer.  One  of  her  songs,  '  When  Summer's  burning  heats 
arise,'  is  described  as  sweet  and  melancholy,  and  when,  in 
1801,  Campbell  made — through  Charles  Moore — the  Siddons' 
acquaintance,  he  wrote :  "  Miss  Siddons  .  .  .  sings  with  incompar- 
able sweetness  melodies  of  her  own  composition.  Except  our 

1  "  Maria  reign'd  sole  arbitress  of  his  fate  for  two  years,  or  more." — Mrs.  Siddons 
to  Mrs.  Pennington,  August  1798. 

2  So  completely  was  the  secret  kept  from  relations  that,  when  Maria  died,  John 
Kemble,   believing  Lawrence  to  be  her  affianced  husband,  devoted  his  leisure  to 
comforting  him. 


196  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

own  Scotch  airs,  and  some  of  Haydn's,  I  have  heard  none  more 
affecting  or  simple."  Some  sentences  from  the  next  paragraph 
of  this  same  letter  from  Sally  to  Lawrence  throw  light  on  the 
inception  of  her  talent : — 

".  .  .  I  never  should  have  sung  as  I  do  had  I  never  seen 
you ;  I  never  should  have  composed  at  all.  Have  I  not  told 
you  that  the  first  song  I  set  to  music  was  that  complaint  of 
Thomson's  to  the  Nightingale?  .  .  .  You  then  liv'd  in  my  heart, 
in  my  head,  in  every  idea.  .  .  .  You  did  not  love  me  then.  But 
NOW !  oh,  mortification,  grief,  agony  are  all  forgot ! !  I" 

While  these  ecstasies  were  going  on  without,  and  while  the 
secret  lovers  were  pacing  the  Square  garden  in  the  spring 
morning — inside  49  Great  Marlborough  Street  the  jilted  girl 
was  beginning  to  die,  as  Allan  Cunningham  maintained  both 
sisters  did,  'just  in  the  usual  way  of  disease  and  doctors.'  The 
Faculty  blistered  and  bled  her,  and  kept  her  peering  out  of 
closed  windows,  and  feeding  on  her  love  disappointment,  during 
the  slow  weeks  of  winter  and  early  spring.  "  I  long  so  much  to 
go  out,"  she  wrote,  "  that  I  envy  every  poor  little  beggar  running 
about  in  the  open  air  ...  it  seems  to  me  that  on  these  beautiful 
sun-shine  days  all  nature  is  reviv'd,  but  not  me  ...  it  appears 
to  me  that  I  should  be  very  like  myself  if  I  could  but  take  a 
walk,  and  feel  the  wind  blow  on  me  again." 

Our  present-day  fervour  of  belief  in  out-of-door  treatment 
for  tuberculosis,  and  contempt  of  our  great-grandparents'  stuffy- 
theories  thereupon — which  accorded  with  their  canopied  and 
close-curtained  four-posters,  their  nightcaps,  and  their  dread  of 
bathing — make  us  liable  to  fancy  that  fresh  air  only  came  in 
with  bacteriology.  The  following,  concerning  Maria  Siddons, 
from  Mrs.  Piozzi,  on  March  27th,  1798,  to  Mrs.  Pennington, 
merits  attention : — 

"...  Shutting  a  young  half-consumptive  girl  up  in  one 
unchanged  air  for  three  or  four  months  would  make  any  of 
them  ill,  and  ill-humoured  too,  I  should  think.  But  'tis  the  new 
way  to  make  them  breathe  their  own  infected  breath  over  and 
over  again  now,  in  defiance  of  old  books,  old  experience,  and 
good  old  common  sense." 

When  July  came,  the  Siddons  family  migrated,  in  Maria's 
interest,  to  Clifton.  The  invalid  bore  the  journey  well,  seemed 


HER  HUSBAND  AND  CHILDREN  197 

better  for  the  change,  rode,  even  went  to  a  ball.  Less  than  a 
fortnight  later,  Mrs.  Siddons  departed  on  a  professional  tour  in 
the  Midlands,  taking  her  husband  and  Sally  with  her,  and 
leaving  Maria  in  Dowry  Square,  Clifton,  under  the  charge  of 
the  unselfish  Mrs.  Pennington,  nfe  Weston,  who  lived  there. 
From  Cheltenham,  early  in  August,  Mrs.  Siddons  wrote  to 
Mrs.  Pennington : — 

"  I  must  go  dress  for  Mrs.  Beverley — my  soul  is  well  tun'd 
for  scenes  of  woe,  and  it  is  sometimes  a  great  relief  from 
the  struggles  I  am  continually  making  to  wear  a  face  of 
cheerfulness  at  home,  that  I  can  at  least  upon  the  stage  give 
a  full  vent  to  the  heart  which,  in  spite  of  my  best  endeavours, 
swells  with  its  weight  almost  to  bursting ;  and  then  I  pour  it 
all  out  upon  my  innocent  auditors." 

The  pyschology  of  the  player  we  conventionally  pity, 
because  he 

'hides  in  rant  the  heart-ache  of  the  night,' 

is  here  laid  bare,  and  one  of  the  first  of  players  is  found  describ- 
ing the  outward  manifestation  permitted  to  stage  tragedy  as 
'  a  great  relief  to  an  overfraught  heart.  To  her,  artist,  primarily, 
as  she  was,  in  the  thickest  of  her  cares,  the  exercise  of  her  art 
was  a  refuge  and  a  safety-valve.  Consciously,  as  well  as  un- 
consciously, she  mingled  her  own  pain  with  the  sorrows  of  the 
part,  and,  thus,  we  cannot  doubt  that  the  loss  of  her  two 
beloved  girls  added  a  further  profundity  to  her  embodiment  of 
Constance,  the  bereft  mother,  in  King  John.  She  said,  years 
afterwards,  that  she  had  never  acted  so  well  as  once,  '  when  her 
heart  was  heavy  concerning  the  loss  of  a  child.' 

Up  to  the  date  when  Sally  left  London,  Lawrence  had 
behaved  rationally.  At  Birmingham,  when  Mrs.  Siddons  was 
due,  on  her  tour,  to  act  there,  he  reappeared,  and,  on  the  day 
1  her  sweet  Sally '  was  despatched  to  Clifton  to  help  in  nursing 
Maria,  as  to  whom  a  disquieting  bulletin  had  been  received,  he 
had  an  interview  with  the  troubled  mother.  She  had  just  heard 
from  Mrs.  Pennington  that  Maria  was  developing  a  fixed  idea 
of  opposition  to  the  possibility  of  Sally  ever  marrying  him. 
Was  Maria's  attitude  vindictiveness  against  him,  we  may  wonder, 
was  there  subconscious  jealousy  in  it,  or  was  it  what  it  professed 
itself — dread  (which  illness  rendered  morbid)  that  her  sister, 


1 98  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

dependent  on  such  a  man,  must  be  unhappy?1  Whatever 
Maria's  motive,  it  seems  clear  that  the  fact  was  communicated 
by  Mrs.  Siddons,  at  this  Birmingham  interview,  to  Lawrence, 
whom  she  certainly  told  that  Sally,  in  view  of  the  desperate 
condition  of  Maria's  health,  now  desired — with  her  own  full 
concurrence — definitely  to  give  him  up,  as  a  lover. 

In  response,  Lawrence  behaved  like  (the  phrase  is  Mrs. 
Siddons's)  a  '  wretched  madman.'  To  threaten  suicide,  or,  as 
its  alternative,  immediate  departure  for  Switzerland,  was,  with 
him,  no  new  device.  Actually  he  'flew'  to  Clifton,  where  he 
lodged,  under  the  name  of  Jennings,  at  the  Bear  Inn,  and  pro- 
ceeded to  bombard  Mrs.  Pennington  with  frantic  letters, 
imploring  her  either  to  remould  Maria's  mind,  or  avert  her 
untoward  influence  over  Sally.  Possessed  by  the  new,  alarming 
suggestion  just  opened  to  his  view,  he  forgot  everything  but 
selfishness. 

Kind-hearted  Mrs.  Pennington,  deprecating  his  Wertherism, 
but  enjoying  the  romance,  granted  him,  on  a  scorching  day,  an 
out-of-door  interview,  whereat,  after  trudging  backwards  and 
forwards,  '  for  very  Life,'  in  a  sunny  field,  beside  '  this  torment 
of  a  man/  listening  to  his  bluster,  she  was  at  last  driven  to 
'  flump  down  upon  a  dusty  Bank '  to  hear  him  out.  Concerning 
Mrs.  Pennington,  at  this  juncture,  Mr.  T.  P.  O'Connor  has 
picturesquely  written  : — 

"  Here  is  a  pretty  situation  for  our  poor  fluttering  chaperon  ; 
that  narrow-winged,  timorous,  decorous  hen  that  has  to  throw 
her  wings  around  this  tragic  flock — which  is  not  her  own — 
with  the  real  guardian,  tall,  stern,  hook-nosed,  brilliant-eyed, 
authoritative,  in  far-off  Birmingham,  enacting  feigned  tragedy  !  " 

A  sterner  intruder  than  Lawrence  was  about  to  lift  the  latch. 
From  this  time  forward,  the  Clifton  letters  become  full  of  pulse, 
perspirations,  cough,  sleeplessness,  debility,  long  hours  of 
silence,  emaciation,  '  not  one  trace  of  even  prettiness  remaining.' 
Mrs.  Siddons  writes,  in  reply :  "  I  do  not  flatter  myself  she  will 
be  long  continued  to  me.  The  Will  of  God  be  done ;  but  I  hope, 
I  hope  she  will  not  suffer  much  \ "  Regarding  Sally,  too,  these 
letters  report  interludes  of  acute  asthma,  when  nothing  avails 

1  Unfortunately,  Sally,  even  after  Maria's  death,  considered  that  her  sister  had 
been  'actuated  as  much  by  resentment  for  Aim,  as  care  and  tenderness  for  her.' 


HER  HUSBAND  AND  CHILDREN  199 

but  laudanum,  under  which  she  lies,  for  the  greater  part  of  a 
week  at  a  time,  '  her  faculties  ic'd  over.'  But  Sally  recovers  as 
rapidly  as  she  is  taken  ill.  On  September  15th,  she  writes  to 
Miss  Bird  : — 

"  I  look  forward  to  the  greatest  of  comforts,  we  expect  my 
belov'd  mother  in  a  week,  and  greatly  as  the  joy  of  this  meeting 
will  be  damp'd  by  poor  Maria's  situation,  yet  to  me  it  will  be 
the  greatest  comfort  and  happiness,  if  at  present  I  could  feel 
happy.  Blest  in  the  society  and  love  of  that  best  of  mothers, 
I  scarcely  feel  another  want,  but  absent  from  her,  there  is  a 
vacancy  in  my  heart  nothing  else  can  fill.  You  are  become 
better  acquainted  with  her,  my  dear  friend,  and  have  overcome 
the  prejudices  which  made  you  afraid  of  her.  Now  then  you 
can  imagine  what  she  must  be  to  me,  not  only  the  tenderest  o 
parents,  but  the  sweetest  and  most  indulgent  of  friends,  to 
whom  my  whole  heart  is  open,  and  from  whose  sympathy  and 
consolation  I  have  found  comfort  and  happiness,  in  moments  of 
severe  affliction.  Depriv'd  of  every  other  blessing,  I  must  still 
be  thankful  for  that  great  blessing." 

At  last,  on  September  24th,  Mrs.  Siddons,  who,  likewise,  had 
bei  ;n  counting  on  (and  dreading)  this  day,  was  able  to  rejoin 
he:  children,  and  Maria  was  moved,  in  a  sedan,  from  Mrs. 
Pennington's,  into  lodgings,  across  the  square.  Actors  and 
their  belongings  were  no  less  then  than  they  are  now  the  play- 
things of  gossip,  and,  already,  newspaper  writers  ('unfeeling 
Blockheads'  according  to  Lawrence)  were  circling  round  the 
death-bed  of  Mrs.  Siddons's  daughter,  ignorant  though  they 
were  of  its  innermost  poignancy. 

One  of  the  moving  features  in  the  story  is  the  development 
and  intensification  of  Maria's  character  in  the  school  of  suffering. 
She  began,  frivolous  and  vain,  'incapable  of  any  exertion  of 
mind  or  body,'  she  herself  said,  and  her  mother  agreed,  a 
spoilt  younger  girl,  ready  to  take  on  her  sister's  lover  without 
self-questioning.  Only  a  short  time  after,  but  when  she  is  pro- 
nounced in  danger  of '  a  consumption,'  condemned  to  the  house, 
and  forsaken  by  her  lover,  a  new  interest  in  the  doings  and 
feelings  of  others  appears  in  her  letters,  as  well  as  uncomplain- 
ing patience  touching  her  double  disorder.  Only  towards  the  end 
are  wrung  from  her  the  words, "  Think  what  my  sufferings  must  be, 


200  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

when  I  can  wish  to  leave  such  a  family  as  mine !  yet  I  do  wish  to 
be  released."  And  then,  as  her  whole  state  becomes  more  and 
more  abnormal,  there  emerges  the  dogged  bias  against  Lawrence 
which  remains  with  her  till  the  last. 

What,  meanwhile,  of  Sally's  attitude?  How  did  she  bear 
herself,  set  midway  between  the  impulsive  artist  she  loved  and 
the  dying  sister  he  had  injured,  as,  earlier,  he  had  injured 
herself?  A  few  words  from  one  of  Mrs.  Pennington's  letters  to 
Lawrence  best  answers : — 

"  This  dear  Girl's  Mind  is  as  firm  as  her  Heart  is  tender  and 
affectionate.  The  present  critical  and  uncommon  state  of 
circumstances  in  which  she  is  placed  calls  forth  all  her  energies. 
She  is  really  elevated  above  all  thoughts  of  Self — alive  only  to 
her  duties." 

October  7th,  1798,  proved  to  be  Maria's  last  day  of  existence. 
The  letter  in  which,  at  Lawrence's  express  request,  Mrs. 
Pennington  conveyed  to  him,  together  with  his  own  doom,  every 
detail  of  the  final  twenty-four  hours,  is  too  piteous  to  dwell  on. 
One  extract  is  necessary  to  explain  after-occurrences : — 

"  She  desired  to  have  Prayers  read,  and  followed  her  angelic 
mother,  who  read  them,  and  who  appear'd  like  a  blessed  spirit 
ministering  about  her.  She  then  turn'd  the  conversation  to  you, 
and  said :  '  That  man  told  you,  Mother,  he  had  destroy'd  my 
Letters.  /  have  no  opinion  of  his  honor,  and  I  entreat  you  to 
demand  them.'  .  .  .  She  then  said,  Sally  had  promised  her 
NEVER  to  think  of  an  union  with  Mr.  Lawrence,  and  appeal'd 
to  her  Sister  to  confirm  it,1  who,  quite  overcome,  reply'd :  '  I 
did  not  promise,  dear,  dying  Angel ;  but  I  WILL,  and  DO,  if 
you  require  it.'  '  Thank  you,  Sally ;  my  dear  Mother — Mrs. 
Pennington  .  .  .  lay  your  hands  on  hers*  (we  did  so). — 'You 
understand?  bear  witness.'  We  bowed,  and  were  speechless; 
'  Sally,  sacred,  sacred  be  this  promise' — stretching  out  her  hand, 
and  pointing  her  forefinger — 'REMEMBER  ME,  and  God  bless 
you.' 

"And  what,  after  this,  my  friend,  can  you  say  to  SALLY 
SlDDONS?  She  has  entreated  me  to  give  you  this  detail — 
to  say  that  the  impression  IS  sacred,  IS  indelible — that  it 

1  Mr.  Siddons,  also,  we  must  suppose,  at  Clifton,  was  out  of  the  room  when  this 
scene  took  place. 


CECILIA  SIDDONS 


HER  HUSBAND  AND  CHILDREN  201 

cancels  all  former  bonds  and  engagements — that  she  entreats 
you  to  submit,  and  not  to  prophane  this  awful  season  by  a 
murmur." 

To  this  letter,  Lawrence,  only  consistent  in  being  selfish, 
hurled  a  reply  like  a  bardic  curse.  Mrs.  Pennington  and  Mrs. 
Siddons  termed  it  'diabolical.'  It  was  the  cry  of  rage  of  a 
baffled  animal,  and,  with  Sally  and  her  mother,  injured  his  cause 
as  much  as  the  vow  it  protested  against  had  done.  "  It  may  be 
love"  wrote  Sally  to  Mrs.  Pennington,  "  but  ...  /  fly  with 
HORROR  from  such  a  passion  !  I  will  not  say  that  weakness 
shall  never  return  .  .  .  We  cannot,  you  know,  quite  conquer  all 
our  feelings,  but  .  .  .  with  the  help  of  heaven  .  .  .  whatever  I 
may  feel  I  will  act  AS  I  HAVE  PROMIS'D." 

Mrs.  Siddons  quickly  returned  from  the  dark,  awful  impres- 
sion of  untimely  death  to  what  she  named  'the  siege  of  her 
affairs/  "  Ce  riest  que  le  travail  qui  guerit  de  vivre?  She  was 
no  marble  lady,  bending  over  an  urn.  She  grieved,  and  her 
grief  was,  as  she  had  once  honoured  a  friend's  for  being,  *  little 
clamorous,  solemn,  simple/ x  yet,  in  under  three  weeks,  she  was 
acting  again.  Outsiders  find  it  a  jarring  fact  that  players 
resume  their  engagements  so  quickly,  after  occasions  of 
mourning.  It  is  sometimes  forgotten  that  players  think,  not 
of  the  amusement  side  of  the  theatre,  but  of  what  Mrs.  Siddons, 
just  after  her  father's  death,  termed  '  the  anxiety  of  business/ 

She  now  chose  the  part  of  Isabella,  in  Measure  for  Measure, 
for  the  touching  reason  that  it  was  '  a  character  that  affords  as 
little  as  possible  to  open  wounds  which  are  but  too  apt  to  bleed 
afresh/  Even  now,  she  could  not  face  the  consequences  of 
shaking  off  Lawrence  altogether.  Perhaps,  because  she  feared 
what  she  called  '  an  eclat '  unless  he  were  humoured,  she  made 
the  certainly  weak  suggestion  to  Mrs.  Pennington  that  the  latter 
should  promise  him  that  Sally  would  become  engaged  to  no 
one  else. 

From  this  time,  Lawrence,  as  a  speaking  character,  drops 
out  of  the  Siddons  domestic  drama,  and  Sally,  except  by  some 
comfortless  accident,  saw  him  no  more.  For  awhile,  he  went 
on  declaring — to  the  Twisses — his  unalterable  determination  to 
marry  her.  When  she  did,  by  chance,  see  him,  he  behaved 

1  Whalley,  ii.  22. 


202  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

ungovernably.  Once  he  wrote  to  her,  but  she  answered  his 
letter  so  decisively  that  he  began  to  realise  she  was  immovable. 
In  the  detached  tone  that,  every  now  and  then,  characterised 
Mrs.  Siddons,  even  in  affairs  of  acute  personal  interest,  she  wrote, 
concerning  her  daughter,  under  date,  November  nth,  1799: 
"  Poor  Soul,  she  thought,  I  suppose  (naturally  enough  for  her) 
that  his  adoration  was  to  last  for  ever,  even  against  Hope,  and 
I  think  is  rather  piqued  to  find  that '  these  violent  transports 
have  violent  ends.' " 

Sally  wore  a  brave  face,  in  spite  of  the  inner  restlessness  her 
intimate  letters  reveal.  Though,  shortly  after  her  sister's  death, 
she  cared  not  if  she  never  entered  another  '  crouded '  assembly, 
she  now  mixed  a  great  deal  in  society.  She  took  up  the 
successive  fashions  of  the  hour — among  them,  skipping.  She 
kept  up  her  friendly  familiarity  with  Mrs.  Inchbald's  Charles 
Moore,  that  phenomenal  laugher,  the  youngest  and  barrister 
brother  of  Sir  John  Moore,  on  whose  distinguished  family 
a  volume  might  be  written,  tragic,  too.  Mrs.  Mair — though, 
it  may  be,  under  a  misapprehension — states  that,  at  the  time 
of  her  death,  she  was  engaged  to  Charles.  In  a  letter  of 
Mrs.  Siddons's  we  read  that  Sally  '  had  a  particular  regard  for 
him,'  a  regard,  she  implies,  which,  had  health  been  hers,  might 
have  ripened  into  marriage.  There  can  be  little  doubt  that 
Charles  Moore  was  in  love  with  her. 

Asthma,  meantime,  was  strengthening  its  grip  on  Sally. 
On  January  8th,  1799,  she  writes,  "  I  am  ...  in  tortures  with  that 
same  pain  in  my  back  which  returns  with  the  slightest  cold." 
Seven  months  later,  she  had  an  attack  so  severe  as  to  place  her 
life  in  some  danger ;  in  the  following  November,  Mrs.  Siddons 
was  doubting  whether  she  ought  ever  to  go  out  in  the  evening, 
in  winter.  In  January,  1801,  one  of  Sally's  letters  contains  this 
passage : — 

"  I  sing  but  little  now  to  what  I  did  once,  and  indeed 
I  think  all  my  energy  is  weaken'd  since  I  have  ceas'd  to  give 
delight  to  the  three  beings  who  were  dearest  to  me  on  earth ; 
one  is  gone  for  ever,  the  second  is  as  dead  to  me,  and  the  third 
no  longer  takes  the  same  delight  in  me  she  once  did." 

The  last  reference  is  to  the  mother  in  whose  absence,  two 
years  later,  she  wrote,  "  home  wants  more  than  half  its  comforts 


HER  HUSBAND  AND  CHILDREN  203 

while  she  is  away."  Between  mother  and  daughter,  a  little 
cloud  had  gradually  risen,  as  to  Lawrence.  While  Mrs.  Siddons 
was  still  nervously  warding  off  any  likelihood  of  a  meeting 
between  him  and  '  the  best  beloved  of  her  heart,'  her  '  adorable 
Sally/  she  herself,  acknowledging  to  Mrs.  Pennington  that  'a 
corner  of  her  heart  still  yearned  towards  this  unhappy  creature,' 
and  away  from  her  house  and  family,  renewed  friendly  relations 
with  him.  To  the  disquietude  of  Sally,  and  the  disapproval  of 
intimates  acquainted  with  the  facts,  she  saw  him  in  her  room 
at  the  theatre,  almost  every  evening.  But  she  brought  home 
scarcely  any  news,  and  no  messages.  She  could  never  clear 
her  mind  of  the  suspicion  that  Sally  would — to  her  certain 
unhappiness — relent  if  she  came  under  his  spell.  Each  woman 
must  have  thought  the  other  weaker  than  herself. 

Things  were  remaining  in  this  condition,  but  with  Lawrence 
quite  cooled,  and  cherishing  little  more  than  a  memory  of  Sally, 
when,  in  May,  1802,  her  Drury  Lane  period  finally  ended,  and 
her  Covent  Garden  period  not  yet  begun,  Mrs.  Siddons,  attended 
by  Patty  Wilkinson,  who  had  companioned  her  and  Sally  ever 
since  Maria's  death,  started  for  Ireland  on  a  tour  of  considerable 
duration.  Sally  was  judged  just  not  well  enough  to  go.  She 
stayed  in  London,  with  her  father ;  her  brother,  George ;  during 
school  holidays,  little  Cecy  Siddons;  and  Dorothy  Place, 
another  girl  friend  almost  domiciled  in  Great  Marlborough 
Street. 

Mrs.  Siddons  left  home  with  a  heavy  heart.  She  was 
oppressed  by  a  presentiment  of  misfortune,  and,  since  it  was 
natural  she  should  fix  her  fears  on  the  likeliest  calamity,  we 
find  her  writing  to  Mrs.  Piozzi :  " .  .  .  my  eyes  have  dwelt  with 
a  foreboding  tenderness  too  painful,  on  the  venerable  face 
of  my  dear  father,  that  tells  me  I  shall  look  on  it  no  more." 

Summer  and  autumn  brought  her  letters  calculated  to 
reassure  her  as  to  the  welfare  of  those  left  behind.  Sally's  told 
of  jaunts  with  Bertie  Greatheed  and  Charlie  Moore,  a  l pic-nic' 
in  the  Temple,  Dorothy's  new  hat,  '  a  pretty  cold  supper,'  late 
hours,  visits  to  the  play — "how  delightfully  I  laughed  at 
'Fortune's  Frolic.'"  It  all  sounded  wholesome  and  young. 
Henry  Siddons's  wedding  took  place  during  this  same  summer, 
and  Sally  sent  Patty  a  description  of  how  Miss  Murray  looked 


204  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

in  her  travelling  wedding  dress,  how  moist  people's  pocket 
handkerchiefs  were,  how  nervous  Harry  was — so  nervous  that 
he  '  shook,'  how,  nevertheless,  he  "  was  very  ready  to  reply,  and 
cried  out, '  I  will,' "  and  wanted  to  put  on  the  ring,  before  the 
proper  time. 

Mrs.  Siddons's  three  headquarters  were  Dublin,  Cork,  and 
Belfast,  and,  in  each,  her  popularity  and  profits  were  enormous. 
The  profits  were  wanted,  for,  in  the  late  autumn,  '  Sid '  wrote, 
anxious  as  to  ways  and  means,  and  begging  her  to  accept 
a  Liverpool  offer,  unless  she  chose  to  extend  her  Dublin 
engagement.  There  was  a  long  bill  for  the  decoration  of 
49  Great  Marlborough  Street,  and  George  needed  a  costly  outfit 
for  India.  Upon  this,  the  money-maker  arranged  to  keep  on 
in  Dublin  for  the  winter.  On  December  9th,  the  news  came  to 
her  of  Roger  Kemble's  death  on  the  6th.  The  comforting  and 
rational  promise,  "  Instead  of  thy  fathers  shall  be  thy  children," 
was  not  to  be  fully  verified  to  her. 

In  February,  1803,  in  Dublin,  Mrs.  Siddons  had  the — in  part, 
heart-aching — pleasure  of  a  fortnight's  visit  from  her  son, 
George,  just  before  his  departure  for  Bengal.  "Their  mutual 
smiles,"  wrote  Patty  Wilkinson,  "  were  often  more  affecting  than 
any  tears."  They  never  met  again. 

Not  till  almost  mid-March  did  any  suggestion  reach 
Ireland  that  Sally  (of  whom  George's  news  had  been  good) 
was  acutely,  and,  this  time,  mortally  stricken.  On  March  loth, 
Mr.  Siddons  wrote  to  Patty  Wilkinson,  but  begged  her  to  say 
nothing  to  alarm  his  wife.  Patty,  trusting  her  own  judgment 
in  preference  to  his,  showed  Mrs.  Siddons  the  letter,  and 
Mrs.  Siddons  determined  to  throw  everything  over,  and  hasten 
home.  Unhappily,  the  gale  was  so  contrary,  that,  for  days, 
boats  could  not  put  out.  A  brighter  report,  meanwhile,  arrived 
from  'Sid,'  who — unforgivably  callous,  at  such  a  juncture,  in 
thinking  solely  of  gain — urged  Mrs.  Siddons  not  to  abandon 
a  pending  engagement  at  Cork.  On  this,  she  proceeded  to 
Cork,  whence  she  wrote  to  Mrs.  Fitzhugh  in  London : — 

"...  Would  to  God  I  were  at  her  bedside !  .  .  .  Will  you 
believe  that  I  must  play  to-night,  and  can  you  imagine  any 
wretchedness  like  it  in  this  terrible  state  of  mind?  For  a 
moment  I  comfort  myself  by  reflecting  on  the  strength  of 


HER  HUSBAND  AND  CHILDREN  205 

the  dear  creature's  constitution.  .  .  .  Then  again,  when  I  think 
of  the  frail  tenure  of  human  existence,  my  heart  fails,  and 
sinks  into  dejection.  .  .  .  The  suspense  that  distance  keeps 
me  in,  you  may  imagine,  but  it  cannot  be  described." 

There  was  no  telegraph,  and,  in  those  ante-steamship, 
ante-railway  days,  Ireland  was  more  distant  from  London 
than  Seville  is  now.  After  further  days  of  bad  weather  and 
delayed  packet  service,  an  unfavourable  bulletin  reached  Mrs. 
Siddons.  In  contrast  to  her  husband,  her  Cork  Manager,  Pero, 
showed  himself  sympathetic  and  generous  regarding  the 
breaking  of  his  bargain,  and,  having  settled  this,  she  returned 
— in  the  hope  of  a  possible  sea-passage — to  Dublin,  where, 
again,  she  had  to  await  a  change  of  wind.  In  her  anguish,  she 
wrote  to  Mrs.  Fitzhugh : — 

"  I  am  perfectly  astonished  .  .  .  that  I  have  not  heard  from 
you,  after  begging  it  so  earnestly.  ...  I  cannot  account  for 
your  silence  at  all,  for  you  know  how  to  feel.  I  hope  to  sail 
to-night,  and  to  reach  London  the  third  day.  .  .  .  Oh  God ! 
what  a  home  to  return  to  ...  and  what  a  prospect  to  the  end  of 
my  days  ! " 

When,  at  last,  she  had  got  as  far  on  her  journey  as 
Shrewsbury,  she  was  met  by  a  letter  which  boded  the  worst. 
Two  hours  after  Mr.  Siddons  wrote  it,  on  March  24th,  1803, 
Sally,  at  the  age  of  twenty-seven,  breathed  her  last.  She  had 
been  under  the  care  of  one  of  the  leading  doctors  of  the 
day,  Sir  Lucas  Pepys.  Her  death  was,  in  all  probability,  due 
to  emphysema  of  the  lungs,  induced  by  the  severity  and 
frequency  of  her  paroxysms  of  asthma.  Immediately  she 
was  dead,  some  one  was  charged  to  carry  the  tidings  to 
Shrewsbury.  Mrs.  Siddons  was  reading  her  husband's  latest 
letter  as  Patty  Wilkinson  was  called  from  the  room.  When 
Patty  returned,  she  had  no  need  to  speak.  Her  face  told  all. 

For  a  day,  Mrs.  Siddons  lay  as  cold  and  quiet  as  a  stone, 
in  a  state  that  may  well  have  been  the  culmination  of  those 
'desperate  tranquillities,'  that,  in  private,  life  were,  she  said, 
her  way  of  manifesting  the  tragedy  within. 

Three  months  later,  we  find  her  writing  to  Mrs.  Galindo : — 

"...  the  inscrutable  ways  of  providence !  Two  lovely 
creatures  gone,  and  another  is  just  arrived  from  school  with 


206  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

all  the  dazzling,  frightful  sort  of  beauty  that  irradiated  the 
countenance  of  Maria,  and  makes  me  shudder  when  I  look 
at  her.  I  feel  myself  like  poor  Niobe  grasping  to  her  bosom  .  .  . 
the  last  and  younger  of  her  children  .  .  ." 

This  last  and  youngest  was  Cecilia,  the  only  daughter,  as 
George  was  the  only  son,  who  survived  Mrs.  Siddons.  Cecilia, 
who  was  nine  when  Sally  died,  was  Mrs.  Piozzi's  godchild,  and 
named  after  Cecilia  Thrale.  Dr.  Whalley  was  her  godfather, 
or,  as  she,  when  little,  persistently  said,  her  'grandfather.'  In 
spite  of  the  '  dazzling,  frightful  sort  of  beauty/  she  was 
preserved  to  be  the  comfort  of  her  mother's  declining  years. 
So  faithfully  did  she  play  the  home-keeping  spinster  princess 
to  her  mother's  widowed  queen  that  people  thought  the  role 
absorbed  her  energies  to  an  unfair  extent.  "  Cecilia's  life," 
wrote  Fanny  Kemble,  "  has  been  one  enduring  devotion  and 
self-sacrifice."  In  an  unpublished  letter  from  George  Siddons, 
dated  Calcutta,  25th  May,  1819,  the  writer  inquires,  "Is  my 
sister  likely  to  get  a  mate,  or  is  it  her  resolve  to  die  a — miss  ?  " 
Six  months  after  Mrs.  Siddons's  death,  Cecilia,  *  aged  and 
thin,'  appeared,  to  her  cousin  Fanny,  to  have  lost  the  one 
idea  of  her  whole  life. 

About  eighteen  months  more  elapsed,  and,  then,  Cecilia, 
aged  thirty-nine,  with  £15, OCX),  married  George  Combe,  of 
Edinburgh,  who,  till  about  1837,  when  he  retired,  was  a 
Writer  to  the  Signet.  In  1828,  Combe  published  a  book, 
The  Constitution  of  Man  in  relation  to  External  Objects, 
which  approached  in  circulation  to  the  Bible,  The  Pilgrim's 
Progress,  and  Robinson  Crusoe.  We  recall  Fanny  Kemble's 
statement  as  to  '  the  very  decided  character '  of  her  cousin, 
Cecilia's,  face  when  we  read  that  Combe  had  no  idea  of  risking 
matrimony  until  he  had  thoroughly  examined  his  lady-love's 
head,  and  found  her  '  anterior  lobe  to  be  large,  her 
Benevolence,  Conscientiousness,  Firmness,  Self-esteem,  and  Love 
of  Approbation  amply  developed  ;  whilst  her  Veneration  and 
Wonder  were  equally  moderate  with  his  own.'  In  consequence, 
or  in  spite,  of  these  discoveries,  the  marriage  proved  happy. 
The  phrenologist  died  in  1858;  Cecilia  died  (without  issue)  on 
February  ipth,  1868. 

Henry,  the  eldest  of  Mrs.   Siddons's  children,  who,  after 


HER  HUSBAND  AND  CHILDREN  207 

the  Charterhouse,  was,  like  his  sisters,  sent  to  France,  had  an 
unconquerable  taste  for  drama.  At  fifteen,  he  wrote  an 
interlude  called  Modern  Breakfast,  which  was  acted  at  Mrs. 
Stephen  Kemble's  benefit.  Five  years  later,  he  dramatised — 
and,  says  Genest,  '  dramatised  most  vilely ' — 'Anne  Radcliffe's  A 
Sicilian  Romance.  However  poor,  the  piece  was  produced  at 
Covent  Garden.  In  secondhand  booksellers'  we  may  see — 
without  feeling  constrained  to  purchase — a  work,  en  titled  Practical 
illustrations  of  rhetorical  gesture  and  action,  adapted  to  the  English 
drama,  From  a  work  on  the  same  subject  by  M.  Engel,  Member 
of  the  Royal  Academy  of  Berlin.  By  Henry  Siddons.  1807. 

Madame  Mere  strongly  desired  that  her  elder  son  would 
enter  the  Church,  but  the  stage  magnetised  him,  and,  in  the 
summer  of  1801,  he  was  acting  with  her  in  the  provinces, 
preparatory  to  a  winter  season  at  Covent  Garden.  On 
October  8th,  he  made  his  first  London  appearance,  as  the  hero 
of  Integrity,  a  comedy  newly  adapted  from  the  German.  Ever 
diffident  and  nervous,  young  Siddons  is  said  to  have  begged 
the  speaker  of  the  prologue  to  intercede  with  the  audience  in 
his  favour,  but  this  was  refused.  Strengthened  by  his  name, 
he  made  a  tolerably  successful  de"but.  The  letters  his  mother 
wrote,  at  the  time,  to  Mrs.  Inchbald  and  Mrs.  Fitzhugh  are 
touching  in  their  anxiety  and  would-be  pride,  combining  with 
prescience,  mute,  but  manifest,  that  Harry  would  never  become 
great. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  'Stranger'  was  the  only  part  he 
personated  with  success,  and  that  because  it  suited  his  own 
disposition,  for,  as  Mrs.  Siddons  observed,  he  had  'a  fine, 
honorable,  but  alas !  melancholy  character.'  He  possessed  too 
little  self-confidence,  or,  perhaps,  as  some  one  said,  too  fine  a 
contexture  of  nerve.  Upon  finding  him  described  as  deficient 
'in  his  voice,  form,  and  face,'  the  commentator  may  question 
whether  the  force  of  deficiency  could  go  farther.  Gait,  when 
quite  young,  saw  Harry  play  Macbeth,  at  Durham,  to  the  Lady 
Macbeth  of  Mrs.  Siddons,  and  noted  : — 

"Through  all  the  performance  she  spoke  as  it  were  in  a 
suppressed  voice,  that  seemed  to  lend  additional  poetry  to  the 
text.  I  afterwards,  however,  suspected  that  it  was  accidental. 
Henry  Siddons,  her  son,  who  performed  Macbeth,  was  not  a 


208  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

judicious  actor ;  his  emphasis  was  too  boisterous,  and  it  might 
be  that  she  assumed  the  undertone  .  .  .  from  a  desire  to 
moderate  his  loud  vehemence  ;  at  least,  I  never  heard  her  speak 
in  the  same  key  again." 

Harry  married  a  great-granddaughter  of  that  John  Murray 
of  Broughton  who,  after  being  Prince  Charles  Edward's 
Secretary,  became  '  Mr.  Evidence  Murray.'  The  marriage  was 
happy,  Harriet  Murray  was  an  agreeable  actress,  and  we  need 
only  to  consult  the  first  volume  of  Record  of  a  Girlhood  to  find 
what  sunshine  she  diffused  in  her  home.  None  of  the  Harry 
Siddons'  three  children  took  to  acting.  When  they  were  little, 
Grandmother  Siddons  was  going  to  play  Coriolanus,  in  Edin- 
burgh, and  wanted  to  bring  them  (as  one  of  them,  when  Mrs. 
Mair,  long  afterwards  remembered)  on  the  stage,  but  their 
father  would  not  consent. 

It  was  owing  to  Walter  Scott's  cordiality  that,  in  1809, 
Siddons  became  lessee  and  Manager  of  the  New  Theatre 
Royal,  Edinburgh,  and  we  may  guess  Scott's  enthusiasm  when 
his  friend's  son  produced,  as  his  first  new  play,  Joanna  Baillie's 
The  Family  Legend^  propped  by  Mrs.  Siddons.  "  Siddons*  is  a 
good  lad,"  he  told  Joanna  Baillie,  "and  deserves  success." 
Even  this  warm  backer  could  not  away  with  Harry's  own  play, 
produced  in  March,  1810 — "it  was  such  a  thing  as  if  I  or  you 
had  written  it  ...  would  have  been  damned  seventyfold,"  he 
wrote  to  Miss  Baillie. 

On  April  I2th,  1815,  while  still  Edinburgh  Manager,  Harry 
Siddons  died,  of  consumption,  at  forty-one.  He  left,  said  his 
mother,  "a  sphere  of  painful  and  anxious  existence  with  which 
he  was  ill  calculated  to  struggle."  Mr.  Leigh  permits  me  to 
reproduce  an  unpublished  letter  (facing  p.  218),  addressed  by 
Mrs.  Siddons  to  Mrs.  Piozzi,  shortly  after  his  death.  It  is  a 
letter  that  shows  an  already  venerably  resigned  attitude  towards 

'Death  the  Skeleton 
And  Time  the  Shadow,' 

and  shows,  too,  Mrs.  Siddons's  power  of  writing  nobly. 

Though  she  bore  calamities  with  the  equal  mind  of  some 
Cornelia  of  old,  none  the  less  she  felt  them. 

In  1803,  or  late  in  1802,  her  consistent  patron,  the  Prince 


HER  HUSBAND  AND  CHILDREN  209 

of  Wales,  gave  her  second  son,  George  Siddons,  an  Indian 
cadetship,  and,  almost  immediately  after,  a  writership,  which, 
in  the  interval,  fell  vacant.  I  have  before  me  a  sheet  of 
voluminous  MS.  letters,  the  property  of  Mr.  Horace  Twiss,  that 
were  written  by  George,  from  Sumatra  and  Calcutta,  to  his 
cousin  *  Nol '  (Horace)  Twiss.  The  ingrained  Civilian,  with  his 
Anglo-Indian  jests,  grievances,  conventional  propriety,  stoicism, 
and  home-sickness,  speaks  through  them.  George  became 
Collector  of  Calcutta  Government  Customs,  and  married  a  lady 
who,  on  one  side,  derived  her  blood  from  the  Kings  of  Delhi. 

India  was  destined  to  absorb  an  extraordinary  number  of 
Mrs.  Siddons's  descendants.  In  Notes  and  Queries,  for  January 
1st,  1887,  appeared  a  letter  from  the  late  Colonel  H.  G.  F. 
Siddons,  George  Siddons's  grandson,  which  showed  that  the 
Siddons  race  was,  then,  in  no  immediate  danger  of  ceasing  to 
obey  the  Divine  injunction  to  replenish  the  earth.  The  courtesy 
of  the  Editor  of  Notes  and  Queries  enables  me  to  quote  from 
this  interesting  document,  as  follows  : — 

"...  Sarah  Siddons  (the  tragedienne}  left  three  children 
who  married,  namely,  Henry,  George,  and  Cecilia. 

"  Of  these,  Henry  married  Miss  Murray,  and  left  issue  (a) 
Henry  Siddons,  of  the  Bengal  Engineers,  who  married  his 
cousin,  Harriott  Siddons  (below  named),  and  left  one  child, 
Sarah  Siddons,  now  living,  unmarried.  (£)  Sarah,  who  married 
William  Grant,  of  Rothiemercus,  and  left  no  issue,  (c)  Elizabeth, 
who  married  Major  Mair,  of  Edinburgh,  and  left  a  son  and  four 
daughters. 

"  Mrs.  Siddons's  second  son,  George,  of  the  Bengal  Civil 
Service,  married  Miss  Fombelle,  and  left  issue  (a)  Frances,  who 
married  Professor  Horace  Wilson,  and  left  six  daughters,  (fr) 
George  Siddons,  of  the  Bengal  Cavalry,  who  left  one  child, 
Mary,  married  to  J.  Hawtrey,  and  now  living,  (c)  Harriott, 
who  married  her  cousin,  Henry  Siddons,  and  left  one  child, 
Sarah  Siddons,  above  named,  (d)  Sarah,  who  married  William 
Young,  of  the  Bengal  Civil  Service,  is  now  living,  and  has  two 
sons  and  two  daughters,  (e)  Henry  Siddons,  of  the  Madras 
Cavalry,  who  left  one  child,  Henry  Siddons  (the  undersigned), 
now  living,  married.  (/)  William  Siddons,  of  the  Bengal  Native 
Infantry,  who  left  four  children,  all  now  living,  namely,  Mary 


210  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

Scott  S-iddons,  who  married,  but  resumed  the  name ;  Harriott 
Siddons,  unmarried;  William  Siddons  of  the  Bengal  Un- 
covenanted  Service,  who  is  married  and  has  two  daughters ; 
and  Henry  Siddons,  unmarried,  (g)  Mary,  who  married  Robert 
Thornhill,  of  the  Bengal  Civil  Service,  and  was  killed  at 
Cawnpore,  leaving  two  sons  and  one  daughter.  .  .  . 

HENRY  G.  F.  SIDDONS 
Major,  Royal  Artillery 
Liverpool " 


XV 
FRIENDS 

APART   my  heroine   admirably  sustained,  that   of  Mrs. 
Siddons,    she    enacted    before    two    widely    contrasted 
generations.     Her  early  approver,  Dr.  Johnson,  passed 
away  with  the  year   1784,  and   the   eighteenth   century  died 
with  him.     A  short  silence  fell,  and  then, 

"Scattering  the  past  about, 
Comes  the  new  age" 

— a  wigless  age,  presided  over  by  Wordsworth,  Coleridge,  and 
Byron. 

The  reserve,  the  shut-up-ness  occasional  observers  depre- 
cated in  Mrs.  Siddons  disappeared  when  she  was  with  the 
few  people  outside  her  family  to  whom  she  was  genuinely 
attached.  We  have  seen  how  warm  were  her  expressions  of 
affection  towards  the  Whalleys.  Another  person  she  admitted 
into  full  confidence  was  Hester  Lynch  Piozzi,  whom  she 
addressed  as  'my  beloved  friend'  and  'dear  soul,'  while  Mrs. 
Piozzi,  in  return,  referred  to  her  as  'dear  Siddons,'  'charming 
Siddons.'  When,  in  1782,  Mrs.  Piozzi,  then  Mrs.  Thrale,  first 
met  the  actress,  she  said,  in  her  crisp  way,  to  her  'Tyo,' 
alluding  to  Mrs.  Siddons's  heavy  manner,  "  This  is  a  leaden 
goddess  we  are  all  worshipping!  however,  we  shall  soon  gild 
it."  Sober-sided,  deliberate  Mrs.  Siddons  and  volatile,  berouged 
Mrs.  Thrale  only  became  intimate  after  the  latter  was  married 
(*  ignominiously  married,'  Johnson,  after  the  event,  absurdly 
told  her)  to  Piozzi.  Mrs.  Siddons  did  not  expect  to  care 
much  for  Mrs.  Piozzi,  she  told  Lady  Harcourt,  in  1790,  but 
an  unexpectedly  prolonged  stay  of  three  weeks  at  Streatham 
completely  won  her.  Concerning  her,  Mrs.  Piozzi  wrote,  in 


212  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

1 80 1,  "the  longer  one  knows  that  incomparable  creature  the 
more  reasons  spring  up  to  esteem  and  love  her."  The  two 
ladies  were  complementary  to  each  other,  rather  than  obviously 
sympathetic.  Johnson's  Thralia — to  quote  Mr.  Birrell's  phrase 
— was  the  older  in  years,  Mrs.  Siddons  in  temperament. 

The  Miss  Thrales  appear  to  have  been  the  last  visitors 
admitted  to  Maria  Siddons  before  she  died,  and  Lawrence, 
who  was  resenting  everything,  hated  to  hear  of  the  descent 
upon  the  sick-room  of  these  *  mannish  women/  with  their  crass 
glances  and  '  shock'd '  inquiries.  Their  mother,  with  her  tact 
of  discernment,  foresaw  that  Mr.  Siddons's  grief  over  Maria's 
death  would  be  deeper-seated  and  more  corroding  than  Mrs. 
Siddons's. 

Of  all  the  people  with  whom  Mrs.  Siddons,  in  her  earlier 
days,  was  intimately  thrown,  Mrs.  Inchbald  was  the  most 
interesting.  She  possessed  far  more  personality  than  she 
could  distil  even  into  nineteen  plays  and  that  still  captivating 
novel,  A  Simple  Story.  As  an  actress,  she  was,  naturally, 
beside  Mrs.  Siddons,  'a  waxen  taper  in  the  solar  blaze.' 
There  is  a  well-known  story  as  to  how,  coming  off  the  stage, 
one  evening,  she  was  about  to  sit  next  Melpomene  in  the 
greenroom,  when,  suddenly,  looking  at  her,  she  exclaimed, 
"  No,  I  won't  s-s-s-sit  by  you ;  you're  t-t-t-too  handsome ! " 
In  her  curiously  unoffending  candour  resided  a  great  deal  of 
pretty,  freckled  Mrs.  Inchbald's  peculiar  charm.  The  Kembles 
and  Twisses  all  loved  her,  and  addressed  her  as  'dear  Muse.' 
Lamb  spoke  of  her  as  the  only  endurable  clever  woman  he 
had  ever  known. 

When  Mrs.  Inchbald  had  turned  hardworking  authoress, 
and  Mrs.  Siddons  was  moving  among  social  stars  of  the  first 
magnitude,  occasional  complaints  were  made  of  the  latter's 
giving  little  to  her  'old*  friends  save  'recollections.'  Such  com- 
plaints did  not  necessarily  convict  her  of  worldliness.  "You 
know  too  well  what  a  hurried  life  mine  is,  to  need  apology 
for  this  hasty,  almost  unintelligible  scrawl,"  she  wrote,  on  one 
occasion,  and,  with  what  she  might  well  call,  in  writing  to 
Mrs.  Pennington,  her  '  numerous  claims,'  it  was  equally  impos- 
sible for  her  to  see  the  same  persons  often.  At  another  time, 
we  find  her  begging  Whalley  to  'impute  anything  to  her 


FRIENDS  213 

rather  than  suppose  that  any  earthly  circumstance  of  wealth, 
or  honour,  or  grandeur,  or  any  other  nonsense  of  the  kind, 
could  abate  her  esteem  and  love '  for  him  and  Mrs.  Whalley. 

The  strongest  impression  derivable  from  Boaden's  mostly 
twaddling  '  Memoirs '  of  Mrs.  Inchbald  is  that  of  her  life- 
long, self-denying  frugality,  which  seemed  uncalled  for,  in 
view  of  her  considerable  literary  earnings.  Frequent  in- 
vestments in  the  Reduced  Annuities  and  Long  Annuities 
were  her  sole  personal  luxuries.  On  the  other  hand,  she 
was  ceaselessly  liberal  to  very  unsatisfactory  sisters — there 
was  nothing  in  relation  to  her  thriving,  but  herself,  says 
her  biographer.  Through  all  her  battles,  she  preserved  her 
capacity  for  'larkiness.'  Aged  thirty-five,  she  enters  in  her 
journal,  "  On  the  29th  of  June  (Sunday)  dined,  drank  tea, 
and  supped  with  Mrs.  Whitfield.  At  dark,  she  and  I  and  her 
son  William  walked  out.  I  rapped  at  doors  in  New  Street 
and  King  Street  and  ran  away."  Nothing  sayable  in  few 
words,  descriptively,  as  to  Mrs.  Inchbald  would  render  her 
as  clearly  '  seen  J  as  a  couple  of  extracts  from  her  letters.  To 
her  friend,  Mrs.  Phillips,  she  indited  this  caustic  aphorism  : — 

"  I  think,  in  your  determinations  concerning  your  children, 
you  do  not  sufficiently  consider  .  .  .  how  much  more  than 
upon  all  your  poor  efforts  for  their  welfare,  their  success  will 
depend  upon  chance.  Still,  do  the  best  you  can ;  and  then 
call  that  chance  by  the  name  of  Providence,  and  submit  to  it." 

Touchingly,  and  freshly,  in  one  of  her  later  letters,  she 
wrote :  "It  is  only  in  the  promises  of  the  Gospel  that  I  can 
ever  hope  to  be  young  and  beautiful  again." 

One  of  Mrs.  Richmond  Ritchie's  'sibyls,'  Mrs.  Opie,  was 
a  fervent  friend  of  Mrs.  Siddons's,  though,  after  she  left 
8  Berners  Street,  upon  Opie's  death,  in  1807,  and  resettled 
with  her  father  in  Norwich,  there,  later,  to  become  a  dove- 
grey,  always  pleasantly  coquettish,  Quakeress,  she  only  saw 
her  London  intimates  when  she  made  those  periodic  descents 
of  hers  into  the  metropolitan  whirlpool  which  suggest  to  the 
reader  of  her  letters  a  vegetarian  convert's  lapses  in  the 
direction  of  supr ernes  de  votaille.  Mrs.  Inchbald  thought  Mrs. 
Opie  cleverer  than  her  books,  which  may  well  have  been  the 
case.  The  long  list  of  her  lovers  and  friends  makes  it  clear 


214  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

that  she  was  a  delightful  creature  to  be  with.  In  1798,  John 
Opie,  R.A.,  became  her  husband.  Mrs.  Siddons  used  to  say, 
"  I  like  to  meet  Mr.  Opie ;  for  then  I  always  hear  something 
I  did  not  know  before."  Opie's  (see  illustration  to  face  p.  184) 
is  the  only  portrait  of  William  Siddons  that  has  rewarded  a 
diligent  search. 

Opie's  widow  testified  how  warm  had  been  her  regard  for 
Mrs.  Siddons,  when — after  the  death  of  the  latter — being 
shown,  in  Sir  John  Soane's  Museum,  a  plaster  life  cast 
(curiously  open-lipped)  from  the  retired  actress's  face  that 
still  hangs  there,  she  broke  into  a  passion  of  tears. 

Another  friend  of  Mrs  Siddons's  was  that  woman-souled 
and  man-minded  little  lady,  Joanna  Baillie.  Drama  was 
Miss  Baillie's  star,  and  she  was  dreaming  of  Mrs.  Siddons 
when  she  wrote  De  Montfort.  The  description  of  Jane  de 
Montfort's  appearance,  in  Act  II.  Scene  i,  is  a  description 
of  the  actual  Mrs.  Siddons's  in  1 800 : — 

Lady. — How  looks  her  countenance? 

Page. — So  queenly,  so  commanding,  and  so  noble, 

I  shrunk  at  first  in  awe  ;  but  when  she  smil'd, 

For  so  she  did  to  see  me  thus  abash'd, 

Methought  I  could  have  compass'd  sea  and  land 

To  do  her  bidding. 

Lady. —  Is  she  young  or  old  ? 

Page. — Neither,  if  right  I  guess ;  but  she  is  fair  : 

For  Time  hath  laid  his  hand  so  gently  on  her, 

As  he  too  had  been  aw'd. 

Lady. —  Is  she  large  in  stature? 

Page. — So  stately  and  so  graceful  is  her  form, 

I  thought  at  first  her  stature  was  gigantic; 

But  on  a  near  approach  I  found,  in  truth, 

She  scarcely  does  surpass  the  middle  size 
as  she  moves 

Wide  flows  her  robe  in  many  a  waving  fold, 

As  I  have  seen  unfurled  banners  play 

With  a  soft  breeze." 

Though  De  Montfort  failed  to  grip  the  public,  Mrs.  Siddons 
naturally  loved  the  glorified  herself  that  was  her  part  in  it. 
"  Make  me  some  more  Jane  de  Montforts  ! "  she  said  to  Joanna 
Baillie. 

In  her  Recollections  of  the  Past>  Mrs.  Mair  preserves  the 
record  of  a  religious  correspondence  that  passed  between 


FRIENDS  215 

Joanna  Baillie  and  Mrs.  Siddons,  in  later  life.  The  former 
had  seen  cause  to  modify  her  early  view  on  some  minor  tenets 
of  orthodoxy,  a  fact  she  thought  it  right  to  communicate  to 
so  near  a  friend.  Mrs.  Siddons  received  the  news  of  the 
changes  in  her  outlook,  not  uncharitably,  but  with  the 
characteristic  parenthesis,  "  I  still  hold  fast  my  own  faith 
without  wavering." 

Hannah  More's  is  a  name  which,  particularly  during  its 
bearer's  mundane  first  period,  belonged  to  the  Garrick  circle. 
At  several  points,  later,  it  impinged  on  the  orbit  of  Sarah 
Siddons.  The  lady  whom,  in  1781,  Mrs.  Garrick  called  her 
Chaplain,  resembled  Mrs.  Opie  in  becoming,  as  time  went 
on,  more  avowedly  'strict.'  By  1787,  she  refused  to  go  to 
see  her  own  tragedy,  Percy^  when  it  was  revived,  even  with 
that  paragon  of  decorum,  Mrs.  Siddons,  as  its  heroine.  From 
letters  included  in  their  respective  biographies  we  find  that 
Mrs.  Siddons's  'affectionate  friend,  Hannah  More,'  used  to 
send  her  copies  of  her  works,  and  further  'encourage  and 
cheer'  her  way  (the  quoted  words  are  Mrs.  Siddons's)  (to 
the  better  world.' 

"  I  have  heard,"  Miss  More  wrote  to  her,  from  Barley 
Wood,  in  1811,  "that  you  consider  the  Bible  as  your 
treasure.  May  it  continue  to  be  your  guide  through  life,  and 
your  support  in  that  inevitable  hour  which  awaits  us  all.  It 
has  pleased  God  to  bless  my  little  book  [probably,  a  new 
edition  of  Sacred  Dramas]  with  a  degree  of  success  which  I 
had  no  reason  to  expect." 

Anna  Seward  burnt  voluminous  incense  before  Mrs. 
Siddons.  With  a  letter,  inviting  her,  on  her  way  from  Bir- 
mingham, to  stay  a  few  days  at  Lichfield,  or,  in  Sewardian 
diction,  entreating  the  honour  of  the  Siddons  sleeping  beneath 
her  roof,  she  enclosed  a  twelve-lined  sonnet  (addressed  by 
the  Same  to  the  Same)  which  had  *  descended,'  she  said,  that 
morning,  '  from  her  pen.' 

"Behold,  dividing  still  the  palm  of  Fame, 
Her  radiant  Science,  and  her  spotless  Life  ! " 

thus,   for   an   inflated   'Swan/    rather   neatly,   she   wound    up 
the  lines.     The  Swan  of  Lichfield  came,  at  times,  so  perilously 


216  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

near  writing  herself  down  its  goose,  that  we  are  apt  to  under- 
value sound  and  shrewd  observations  that,  betweenwhiles, 
'  descended ' — to  employ  again  her  mountebank  phraseology — 
from  her  tireless  pen  and  tongue. 

Like  Joanna  Baillie,  Maria  Edgeworth,  and  other  ladies 
of  original  minds  and  irreproachable  morals,  Mrs.  Siddons 
visited  at  the  house  of  Sir  Ralph  and  Lady  Noel  Milbanke 
(afterwards  Noel),  and  became  interested  in  their  reticent, 
almond-eyed  daughter,  "almost  the  only  young,  pretty, 
well-dressed  girl  we  ever  saw  who  carried  no  cheerfulness 
along  with  her."1  To  Mrs.  Siddons,  at  the  close  of  1814, 
Annabel  Milbanke  wrote  to  announce  her  engagement  to 
Byron,  and  her  letter,  noted  Mrs.  Siddons's  granddaughter, 
Mrs.  Mair,  who  owned  it,  was  '  so  full  of  hope  that  the  results 
which  so  soon  followed  seemed  sad  indeed.'  The  best 
sympathetic  account  of  Lady  Byron — the  Lady  Annabel 
Herbert  of  Disraeli's  Venetia — to  be  met  with  forms  one  of 
Harriet  Martineau's  'Biographical  Sketches'  (1868).  Lady 
Byron  had  strong  private-life  admiration  for  Mrs.  Siddons, 
and,  with  Lady  Noel,  both  visited  her,  and  was  visited  by 
her  at  the  Noels'  house  at  Kirkby  Mallory,  Leicestershire. 

Of  all  Mrs.  Siddons's  friends,  the  most  adoring  was  Mrs. 
William  Fitzhugh.  She  was  a  sister  of  the  William  Hamilton 
who  rescued  the  Rosetta  Stone  from  the  French,  shipped  the 
Elgin  Marbles  for  England,  and  became  the  official  successor, 
after  an  interval  of  twenty-two  years,  of  a  better  known  name- 
sake at  the  court  of  Naples.  For  years,  Mrs.  Fitzhugh  played 
henchwoman  to  Mrs.  Siddons.  In  London,  she  tried  to  be 
with  her  all  day,  and  spent  the  evening  in  her  dressing-room 
at  the  theatre.  She  corresponded  incessantly  with  her,  and 
never  willingly  let  a  year  pass  without  entertaining  her  at 
her  husband's  place,  Bannister  Lodge,  near  Southampton. 
From  there,  in  1803,  Mrs.  Siddons  wrote  to  the  Galindos : 
"...  My  dear  Mrs.  Fitzhugh  grudges  every  moment  that 
I  am  not  by  her  side."  For  her  was  painted  Lawrence's 
'  handsome  dark  cow '  whole-length  of  Mrs.  Siddons  reading 
Paradise  Lost,  which  Mrs.  Siddons,  strange  to  say,  thought 

1  The  Literary  Life  of  the  Rev.  William  Harness.  By  the  Rev.  A.  G. 
L'Estrange,  23.  1871. 


FRIENDS  217 

'more  really  like'  her  'than  anything  that  has  been  done.' 
The  portrait  was  in  the  Bannisters  dining-room,  where  Fanny 
Kemble  used  to  sit  under  it,  when  she,  in  her  turn,  went  there 

on  visits  to  *  comical  old  .  .  .  Mrs.  F a  not  very  judicious 

person,'  and  '  Mrs.  F 's '  daughter,  Emily,  who  was  Fanny's 

great  friend.  To  Mrs.  Fitzhugh  were  committed  Mrs. 
Siddons's  'Remarks'  on  Lady  Macbeth,  and  by  her  they 
were  handed  over  to  Campbell,  for  inclusion  in  the  official 
biography.  Mrs.  Fitzhugh's  husband  sat  in  five  Parliaments  for 
Tiverton.  In  the  following  unpublished  letter  (placed  at 
my  disposal  by  Mr.  Horace  Twiss)  Mrs.  Siddons  is  endeavour- 
ing to  make  the  most  of  his  interest  on  behalf  of  her  nephew. 
A  true  aunt's  letter,  its  recommendation  of  '  Self  esteem '  is 
a  delightful  Kemble  touch  : — 

"[1809?]     Sunday  night,  Twelve  tf  clock 

"  MY  DEAR  HORACE, — I  have  had  a  great  deal  of  talk  with 
Mr.  F :  about  you,  and  whatever  it  is,  that  is  in  meditation  I 
am  quite  sure  that  his  report  will  be  favourable ;  I  pray  God 
that  it  may  be  efficacious  !  You  will  be  invited  to  dinner  soon 
and  I  need  not  suggest  to  you  to  remember  (with  modesty  and 
sobriety)  that  'oftimes  nothing  profits  more  than  Self  esteem 
grounded  on  just  and  right.' 

"You  know  my  dear  Horace  how  much  your  honor  and 
welfare  interest  me  and  therefore  you  will  excuse  me  for  desir- 
ing you  to  remember  that  Mr.  Fitzhugh  is  a  wise,  Steady- 
headed  man,  and  I  shoud  imagine  him  very  likely  to  take 
disgust  at  any  little  flippancy  or  frivolity  that  a  thousand  others 
would  overlook  and  excuse  as  the  overflowing  of  youthful 
spirits,  And  '  oh  reform  it  altogether.' 

"  God  bless  and  prosper  you  !  S.  S. 

"  Mrs.  F.  still  insists  that  she  has  often  askd  you  to  call,  and 
mentioned  particularly,  having  done  so  when  she  met  you  one 
evening  at  Mrs.  Opie's. — when  I  told  her  I  was  sure  some 
mistake  must  have  prevented  you  from  availing  yourself  of 
what  I  was  quite  sure  you  would  recieve  as  an  honor  and  a 
gratification — She  said  the  servants  were  so  negligent  that  it 
was  not  impossible  that  you  might  have  calld,  and  they  having 
mislaid  your  Card,  and  you  finding  no  notice  taken  of  your  visit, 
had  naturally  thought  no  more  about  it. — I  said  it  was  very 
likely  to  be  so — And  so  now  you  may  call  or  not  as  seems 
best  to  your  own  feeling." 


218  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

A  better  known  name  in  the  list  Campbell  gives  of  persons 
he  saw  oftenest  at  Mrs.  Siddons's,  during  her  last  fifteen  years, 
is  that  of  Sir  George  and  Lady  Beaumont.  A  prominent 
picture  collector,  a  member  of  the  Society  of  Dilettanti,  a  man 
to  be  thought  of  with  Lock  of  Norbury,  and  Hope  of  'the 
Deep  Dene,'  himself  an  amateur  artist  of  taste,  albeit  obsessed 
by  his  'brown  tree,'  Sir  George  Beaumont  is  best  entitled  to 
remembrance  because,  had  he  never  painted  his  picture  of 
Peele  Castle,  in  a  Storm,  we  might  have  missed  one  of  the 
most  beautiful  of  English  poems.  No  less  than  ten  of  the  out- 
pourings of  Wordsworth's  muse  are  concerned  either  with 
Beaumont  or  his  domain  at  Coleorton,  Leicestershire.  A 
collateral  descendant  of  the  dramatist  of  his  name,  Sir 
George  had  an  innate  love  of  drama,  and  we  understand 
the  attraction  that  led  him  to  Mrs.  Siddons's  house,  when  we 
read  (in  Wordsworth's  '  Elegiac  Musings '  over  his  departed 
friend's  diffident,  self-chosen  epitaph)  l  how  he  could  give,  in 
reading  Shakespeare  to  a  circle, 

'  with  eye,  voice,  mien, 
More  than  theatric  force  to  Shakspeare's  scene.' 

We  have  seen  how  little  cause  Mrs.  Siddons  had  to  like  the 
waspish  Steevens.  Another  editor  of  Shakespeare,  of  whose 
friendship  she  was,  on  the  contrary,  proud,  was  Edmond 
Malone,  and  of  his  strongly  contrasted  'elegance'  (i.e. 
suavity)  of  manner  both  she  and  Kemble  used  to  talk 
admiringly. 

In  Campbell's  list  of  the  habitues  of  Mrs.  Siddons's  drawing- 
room  we  find  the  name  of  the  Rev.  Sydney  Smith — whom 
Amelia  Opie  called  the  ever  welcome.  It  is  pleasant  to  know 
that  the  hostess's  renowned  seriousness  was  no  repelling  force 
for  the  rational,  benevolent,  and  gladsome  Dr.  Anti-Cant  who 
said  that  '  the  gods  do  not  bestow  such  a  face  as  Mrs.  Siddons' 
on  the  stage  more  than  once  in  a  century.'  In  an  '  Edinburgh ' 
of  1809,  we  find  Sydney  Smith  less  informally  lauding  her,  in 
her  public  capacity,  in  these  words :  "  Where  is  every  feeling 
more  roused  in  favour  of  virtue  than  at  a  good  play  ?  Where 
is  goodness  so  feelingly,  so  enthusiastically  learnt?  What 
1  "Enter  not  into  judgment  with  Thy  servant,  O  Lord!" 


FRIENDS  219 

so  solemn  as  to  see  the  excellent  passions  of  the  human  heart 
called  forth  by  a  great  actor,  animated  by  a  great  poet  ?  To 
hear  Siddons  repeat  what  Shakspeare  wrote?"  The  first  time 
Sydney  Smith  met  Mrs.  Siddons,  he  amused  her  so  much  that 
she,  albeit  unused  to  the  shaking  mood,  threw  herself  back, 
and  laughed  so  heartily  and  lengthily,  "that  it  made  quite  a 
scene,  and  all  the  company  were  alarmed." 

Among  Mrs.  Siddons's  regular  callers  was  the  chartered 
punster,  Joseph  Jekyll.  Jekyll's  wit,  said  Rogers,  was  of  the 
kind  which  amused  only  for  a  moment.  He  cited,  in  proof, 
that  when  the  eccentric  and  kleptomaniac  Lady  Cork  (erst- 
while, the  Hon.  Mary  Monckton  and  Dr.  Johnson's  dearest 
dunce)  appeared  in  an  enormous  plume,  Jekyll  remarked,  '  she 
was  exactly  a  shuttlecock — all  cork  and  feathers.'  Among  the 
tea-cups  and  wax  lights  of  one  of  Lady  Cork's  parties,  Mrs. 
Siddons  and  Jekyll  first  met,  and  Campbell  gives  a  sparkling 
letter  from  the  latter  to  the  former,  referring  to  the  occasion,  in 
terms  that  must  have  been  strained,  since  they  adumbrate  his 
correspondent  as  a  queen  of  banter. 

William  Harness,  Vicar  of  All  Saints',  Knightsbridge,  was  a 
familiar  friend  of  the  Kemble  group,  especially  of  Mrs.  Siddons. 
He  edited  Shakespeare,  and,  after  his  death,  a  memorial  to  his 
memory  took  the  form  of  a  prize  founded  at  Cambridge  for  the 
study  of  Shakespearean  literature.  He  was  one  of  that  ever 
winning  type  of  clergymen  who  avowedly  take  the  optimist  view 
of  the  world  and  life.  Dilexit  multum. 

Byron's  first  words  to  Harness,  then  a  pale  little  newcomer 
to  Harrow,  were,  "  If  any  fellow  bullies  you,  tell  me;  and  I'll 
thrash  him  if  I  can."  We  are  bound  to  love  Harness  because 
he  loved  Byron,  and,  unlike  Lady  Byron,  knew  how  to  manage 
him,  and  bring  out  his  best.  "  There  can  be  no  doubt,"  said  he, 
"  that  Byron  was  a  little  '  maddish.' " 

Among  the  more  distinguished  of  Mrs.  Siddons's  admirers 
was  the  Hon.  Thomas  Erskine,  afterwards  Baron  Erskine  and 
Lord  Chancellor.  His  dates  (1750-1823)  nearly  synchronise 
with  hers,  and  a  letter,  signed  A  B,  in  the  Courier  of  August 
26th,  1823,  states,  on  one  knows  not  what  authority,  that 
Tom  Erskine  'and  a  few  literary  friends  at  the  bar'  were 
instrumental  in  her  removal  from  Bath,  in  1782,  back  to  the 


220  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

wider  sphere  of  Drury  Lane.  Fanny  Burney  has  told  how 
Erskine  '  boomed '  Mrs.  Siddons — and  in  Mrs.  Siddons's  presence 
— at  Miss  Monckton's,  in  1782,  talking,  across  her,  of  her  artistic 
excellences.  He  was,  at  all  events,  so  much  more  tactful  in 
praise  than  the  surrounding  '  blues,'  that  Mrs.  Siddons,  in  her 
account  of  this  Sunday  evening  menagerie,  described  his 
'  benevolent  politeness '  as  a  relief  and  deliverance  from  the 
other  guests'  cruder  lionisation. 

Few  men,  belonging  to  the  modern  world,  have  had  a 
more  meteoric  career  than  Erskine,  and  more  forcibly  dominated 
people  and  circumstances  by  sheer  cleverness.  It  was  no 
lesser  leaf  in  our  actress's  laurel  crown  of  eulogies  from  the 
great  that  this  incomparable  advocate,  whose  ' little  twelvers' 
in  the  jury-box  found  it,  said  Brougham,  impossible  to  look 
away  from  him  when  once  riveted  by  his  glance  and  first 
word,  should  have  declared  that  from  Mrs.  Siddons  he  learnt 
his  effective  cadences  and  modulations  of  voice. 

A  story  told  by  Whalley  further  associates  Erskine's  name 
with  Mrs.  Siddons's.  One  evening,  in  the  Brussels  theatre, 
during  the  winter  of  1786-87,  Whalley,  fresh  from  reading 
Lavater,  was  gazing  at  the  faces  round,  '  by  Lavater's  rules/ 
His  physiognomic  interest  presently  became  concentrated  on 
a  gentleman,  who,  taking  a  place  by  him,  began  talking  to 
him,  in  French,  of  the  stage  generally,  and,  before  long,  of 
Mrs.  Siddons.  Whalley  observed — 

"  that  she  shone  [it  was  his  happy  illusion]  both  in  tragedy 
and  in  comedy,  and  that  she  was  not  only  eminent  on  the  stage, 
but  irreproachable  in  her  private  character,  elegant  in  her 
address,  and  in  her  conversation  showed  a  fine  and  cultivated 
understanding.  They  both  agreed  that  it  was  not  common 
for  persons  so  to  shine  in  different  stations  and  accomplish- 
ments, although  there  was  indeed,  said  Mr.  Whalley,  an  instance 
of  the  same  person  shining  in  different  professions  (navy,  army, 
and  law) — the  English  Erskine.  '  Erskine  ? '  said  the  gentle- 
man ;  '  I  am  Erskine  ! ' ' 

By  an  incident,  conveying  rich  indications  to  the  Comic 
Spirit  (as  defined  by  George  Meredith),  Mrs.  Siddons  suddenly 
became,  not  only  a  friend,  but,  in  the  phrase  of  '  George 
Fasten,1  a  *  Mascotte,'  to  impracticable,  fighting  Haydon. 


FRIENDS  221 

Haydon,  so  much  more  salient  a  writer  than  a  painter, 
gives  the  incident  in  his  autobiography,  where  it  forms  the 
culmination  of  his  story  of  a  desperate  artist's  hopes,  fears, 
and  preparations  for  making  known  what  he  believed  his 
masterpiece.  This  was  Christ's  Entry  into  Jerusalem,  ex- 
hibited, in  1820,  at  the  Egyptian  Hall,  as  a  one-man,  and 
one-picture,  show.  Every  occurrence,  even  in  the  hanging 
of  the  picture,  is  given  in  Haydon's  intense  narration.  Duns 
were  pressing,  patrons  weary,  Academy  folk  hostile,  or  cold. 
At  last,  the  critical  Saturday,  Private  View  Day,  arrived. 
During  the  earlier  morning,  the  artist  went  into  the  Egyptian 
Hall,  and,  to  his  mortification,  found  no  one  but  the  attendants. 
When,  at  half-past  twelve,  he  stole  in  again,  and  heard  that 
Sir  William  Scott  had  been  in,  his  spirits  revived.  "He 
always  brings  everybody."  By  half-past  three,  there  was 
a  steady  stream  of  the  society  world,  and  Haydon  (after  two 
glasses  of  sherry)  hastened  inside,  mingling  with  'princes  of 
the  blood,  bishops,  and  noblemen.'  From  the  Persian  Envoy, 
who  exclaimed,  "  I  like  the  elbow  of  soldier,"  everybody 
praised  something.  But,  as  yet,  no  definite  opinion  was  to 
be  heard  on  the  *  unorthodox '  chief  figure.  In  the  middle  of 
the  afternoon,  Enter  Mrs.  Siddons. 

A  silence  fell  on  the  crowd,  while  the  still  magnificent- 
looking  woman — Mike  a  Ceres  or  a  Juno/  says  Haydon — 
contemplated  the  picture.  Then,  Sir  George  Beaumont 
timidly  asked  her,  "  How  do  you  like  the  Christ  ? "  and 
everybody  waited.  After  a  moment,  she  said,  in  her  deep, 
distinct  voice,  "  It  is  completely  successful."  At  this,  Haydon 
was  presented,  and,  in  the  same  tones,  she  added,  now  speaking 
to  him,  "The  paleness  gives  it  a  supernatural  look."  Simple 
words,  but  they  turned  the  scale.  They  were  repeatable. 
The  success  of  the  exhibition  was  secured.  It  is,  in  passing, 
interesting  to  find  that  Mrs.  Siddons's  prestige — her  glamour 
in  the  eyes  of  society — so  long  outlasted  her  retirement  from 
the  stage. 

Haydon  wrote  his  delighted  gratitude  to  Mrs.  Siddons 
(whom  he  addressed  as  'great  high  priestess  at  the  shrine  of 
Nature')  and,  in  reply,  received  a  pressing  invitation  to  call. 
Thus,  he  describes  the  visit : — 


222  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

"  It  was  like  speaking  to  the  mother  of  the  gods.  I  told 
her  when  a  boy  I  had  crept  below  the  orchestra  door  at 
Plymouth  theatre,  and  squeezed  up  underneath  the  stage  box 
...  to  see  her  perform  the  Mother  in  Lillo's  '  Cornish  Tragedy.' 
She  was  pleased." 

Afterwards,  he  besought '  the  mother  of  the  gods '  to  come, 
whenever  a  picture  of  his  was  *  exhibiting/  In  1846,  he  was 
buried  where  he  had  buried  his  children,  near  the  grave  of 
Mrs.  Siddons  in  Paddington  '  new '  churchyard.  His  life  had 
been,  in  Mrs.  Browning's  phrase,  'one  long  agony  of  self- 
assertion/ 

Thomas  Campbell,  introduced  to  Mrs.  Siddons  by  Charles 
Moore,  became  the  favourite  friend  of  her  declining  years. 
In  spite  of  the  sloppiness  and  omissions  of  his  '  Life '  of  her, 
and  although  Mrs.  Mair  found  he  'had  lost  the  power  of 
reproducing,  what  long  intimacy  should  have  enabled  him  to 
do,'  our  knowledge  of  Mrs.  Siddons,  especially  during  her 
latest  period,  would  be  very  considerably  less,  lacking  his 
personal  memories. 

In  P.  G.  Patmore's  My  Friends  and  Acquaintance  it  is 
stated  that  Campbell  never  did  more  for  the  Life  of  Mrs. 
Siddons^  nominally  his,  than  *  overlook  the  manuscript '  and 
c  look  over  the  proof-sheets/  This  statement  was,  to  an  extent, 
disproved  by  a  correspondence  between  Campbell  and  the 
Rev.  Thomas  Price,  published  in  the  '  Literary  Remains '  of 
the  latter.  'The  poet  Campbell'  took  a  considerable  amount 
of  trouble  over  a  task  he  performed  in  heaviness.  Always  a 
man  of  laborious  finish,  by  1832  his  dilatoriness  had  become 
a  vice.  Also,  the  lapse  of  time  had  dimmed  the  impression 
of  the  elastic  day,  when,  as  Mrs.  Mair  records,  he  was  heard 
suddenly  to  say  to  her  grandmother,  "O  what  a  privilege  it 
would  be  to  be  allowed  to  write  your  life,"  and  Mrs.  Siddons's 
reply  was,  "  Then  you  shall  do  it."  Campbell,  certainly,  tried, 
at  the  end  of  1832,  to  engage  J.  P.  Collier  to  collaborate  with 
him,  but  Collier,  scenting  much  work  in  the  proposal  and 
seeing  little  profit — Campbell  offered  £100 — refused. 

Kemble  origins  and  his  heroine's  early  circumstances 
especially  worried — as  Campbell  says,  'distressed' — him,  and 
his  quest  after  something  to  fill  his  first  chapter  led  him  into 


FRIENDS  223 

two  or  three  of  those  operose  excursions  into  the  needless  of 
which  our  grandsires  were  so  much  more  tolerant  in  books 
than  we  are.  About  eleven  weeks  after  Mrs.  Siddons's  death, 
the  author  of  Hohenlinden  opened  a  correspondence  with  that 
amiable  Vicar  of  Crickhowel  who  to  the  vulgar  was  known 
as  Thomas  Price,  but  Carnhuanawc  in  the  world  of  Bards. 
Campbell  told  Price  that  he  was  'obliged  at  Mrs.  Siddonss 
bequest  to  write  a  memoir/  and  that  he  was  graveled  for  lack  of 
matter  relating  to  Brecon.  Regarding  birthplace,  he  inquired, 

"The  family  of  the  Kembles  cannot  inform  me  in  what 
particular  house  or  street  of  the  town  she  was  born — Is  any 
tradition  respecting  her  preserved  in  the  place  ?  .  .  .  Something 
is  whispered  about  her  having  been  born  in  a  house  most 
vulgarly  called  the  haunch  of  mutton." 

To  this  and  further  inquiries  Campbell's  *  learned  Cambrian 
friend'  sent  an  ample  reply,  and  enclosed  a  drawing  (facing 
p.  2)  of  Mrs.  Siddons's  birth-house,  as  he  could  remember  it 
before  it  was  rebuilt. 

In  his  exhilaration  at  raking  in  so  much  stuff  to  spread 
over  his  pages,  Campbell  "  felt  as  if  he  had  known "  his 
correspondent  "twenty  years."  He  went  on  to  describe  him- 
self as  '  Mrs.  Siddons's  biographical  undertaker/  which  sounds 
like  an  adverse  augury  for  what  he  wished,  he  said,  to  make 
'a  light  popular  book.'  Three  months  later,  he  was  still 
in  pursuit  of  copy  for  the  first  chapter,  and,  by  that  time, 
had  run  down  the  Catholic  martyr,  Father  Kemble,  as  to 
whose  end  he  only  wished  he  could  prove  he  had  been 
burnt,  and  not  hanged. 

When  her  daughters  were  marriageable,  and  even  earlier, 
Mrs.  Siddons  gave  evening  parties.  Thus,  in  1791,  she  "did 
the  honours  of  her  house  to  fifty  people,  till  near  2  in  the 
morning,"  and,  twice,  during  1805,  Mrs.  Inchbald  was  her 
guest  at  a  dinner,  followed  by  a  rout.1  In  Mr.  Hardy's 
drama  of  nations,  The  Dynasts,  in  the  scene  at  Windsor, 
after  the  doctors  have  visited  King  George  in  his  padded 
room,  Sir  Henry  Halford  breaks  up  their  consultation  with 
the  words,  "  I  want  to  get  back  to  town.  .  .  .  Mrs.  Siddons  has 

1  Inchbald,    ii.    80.     Mrs.    Inchbald    usually    dined    with    the    Siddonses    on 
Christmas  Day. 


224  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

a  party  at  her  house  at  Westbourne  to-night,  and  all  the 
world  is  going  to  be  there."  Merely  predatory  lion-hunters 
Mrs.  Siddons  avoided — like  '  Dictionary  Johnson  '  —  with 
animus,  but  she  delighted  to  consort  with  people  with 
ideas. 

In  her  intervals  of  leisure,  she  stayed  a  great  deal  at 
'seats.'  Half  her  letters  seem  dated  from  this  Park  or 
t'other  Rectory.  Seven  successive  Christmases  were  spent 
with  the  Earl  and  Countess  of  Arran,  at  Arran  Lodge, 
Bognor;  at  the  Earl  of  Darnley's,  at  Cobham  Hall,  where 
she  conversed  with  Prince  Leopold  and  H.R.H.  the  Duchess 
of  Kent,  her  seventy-second  birthday  was  (too  fatiguingly 
for  her)  celebrated  with  Shakespearean  and  musical  honours, 
and  twenty-three  people  at  dinner.  All  this  was  gratifying, 
yet  one  feels  convinced  that,  with  her  deep  feeling  for  associ- 
ation and  her  sentiment  of  continuity,  the  house  in  which 
she  loved  best  to  recruit  (in  Campbell's  phrase)  her  impaired 
stamina  was  Guy's  Cliffe,  'that  truly  charming,  and  to  me 
uncommonly  interesting  place,'  as  she  called  it. 

The  last  entry  for  1809  in  Windham's  Diary  is  as  follows: 
"  Dr.  Ferris  .  .  .  sent  over  .  .  .  Mrs.  Galando's  '  Letters ' ; 
a  foolish  slander,  as  it  seems,  against  Mrs.  Siddons."  Though 
Mrs.  Siddons's  entire  circle,  and  all  other  people  of  sense, 
took  the  same  view  as  Windham,  r Affaire  Galindo  caused 
Mrs.  Siddons  so  much  vexation,  that,  small  and  base  in 
itself,  it  has  to  be  described,  and,  perhaps,  both  to  biographer 
and  reader,  may  be  allowed  one  passing  gleam  of  wicked 
gratification  at  its  disclosure  of  a  sporadic  vanity  and 
obtuseness  in  one  so  generally  impeccable  as  '  S.  Siddons.' 

In  1809,  appeared  a  pamphlet,  bearing,  for  title,  Mrs. 
Galindo 's  letter  to  Mrs.  Siddons:  being  a  circumstantial  detail 
of  Mrs.  Siddons^  s  life  for  the  last  seven  years  ;  with  several  of 
her  letters.  The  pamphlet  was  no  less  than  an  allegation 
of  misconduct  on  the  part  of  Mrs.  Siddons  and  Mrs.  Galindo's 
husband.  It  proved  nothing  beyond  the  irresponsible  and 
violent  nature  of  its  writer. 

In  a  career,  relatively,  most  tranquil,  Mrs.  Siddons  had, 
before  1809,  already  weathered  a  number  of  accusations. 
As  she  said  in  1786,  she  stood  'some  knocks  with  tolerable 


FRIENDS  225 

firmness.'  But  the  venomous  Galindo  pamphlet  embodied 
a  new  order  of  calumny.  It  was  an  attack  upon  the 
'character'  of  a  woman  whose  'character'  was  her  crown 
and  aegis,  a  woman  with  whom  a  man  could  no  more  fall 
guiltily  in  love  than  with  the  Decalogue,  a  woman  whose 
presence  was  as  instant  a  check  on  loose  behaviour  as  Lady 
Elizabeth  Hastings's,  a  woman  who  had  delivered  to  the 
madcap  who,  one  night,  boarded  her  carriage  as  she  was 
leaving  the  theatre,  the  restorative,  if  somewhat  blatant, 
caution,  "Mr.  Sheridan,  I  trust  that  you  will  behave  with 
all  propriety ;  if  you  do  not,  I  shall  immediately  let  down  the 
glass,  and  desire  the  servant  to  show  you  out."  And,  now, 
'the  Majestic  Siddons,  to  whom  none  dared  express  admira- 
tion* (I  quote  the  words  of  a  contemporary  Drury  Lane 
player),  in  the  autumn  of  her  beauty,  large,  august,  and 
matronly,  was  categorically  charged  with  having  caused 
red  ruin  in  the  home  of  Mrs.  Galindo,  a  minor  tragedienne, 
known  as  Miss  Gough — 'sepulchral  Gough,'  Croker  called 
her  in  his  youthful  verses  on  Dublin  performers. 

Galindo,  described  as  a  personable,  fine  -  limbed  man, 
young  enough  to  be  Mrs.  Siddons's  son,  was  a  fencing- 
master,  in  Bath.  When  his  wife  secured  an  engagement  at 
the  Crow  Street  Theatre,  he  moved  with  her  to  Dublin, 
and,  during  the  earlier  stage  of  the  affair,  he  and  she  were 
living  there,  in  Leinster  Street,  with  their  young  family, 
and  keeping  a  curricle  and  pair.  We  need  not  believe,  with 
the  author  of  a  tract,  entitled  Strictures  on  Mrs.  Galindo's 
Curious  Letter  to  Mrs.  Siddons ;  that  the  behaviour  of  the 
Galindos  was  a  plot  on  their  part  for  the  purpose  of  raising 
the  wind,  though  the  fact  that  Mrs.  Galindo  charged  five 
shillings  for  her  pamphlet  of  eighty  pages  looks  as  though 
she  expected  from  it  the  harvest  of  a  scandalous  success. 

During  Mrs.  Siddons's  Irish  engagements  of  1802-3,  when 
the  intimacy  commenced,  as  well  as  later,  when  she  was, 
temporarily,  at  Hampstead,  and  the  Galindos  had  come  to 
London,  in  anticipation  of  the  Covent  Garden  engagement 
she  had  promised  Mrs.  Galindo,  she  undoubtedly  allowed 
herself  to  be,  to  a  ridiculous  extent,  accaparee  by  the  pair, 
particularly  by  the  husband.  She  let  him  give  her  fencing 


226  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

lessons,  she  let  him — at  a  later  date — borrow  £1000  of  her 
(unknown  to  Mr.  Siddons)  for  the  purpose  of  setting  him  up 
in  the  part  proprietorship  of  the  new  Manchester  Theatre, 
she  let  him  drive  her  about  alone  in  Mrs.  Galindo's  curricle, 
a  vehicle  round  which  the  action  of  this  unimportant  comedy 
seems  to  centre.  It  may  be  noted  that  in  the  selfsame  year, 
1802,  when  some  of  these  indiscretions  were  being  committed 
in  Ireland,  Mrs.  Siddons  had  just  been  passing  through  a 
phase  of  weak  philandering  with  Lawrence  in  London.  She 
was  forty-seven,  and  though,  at  that  climacteric,  the  hey-day 
in  the  blood  is  tame,  and  waits  upon  the  judgment,  it  is 
equally  an  age  when,  with  maturity  about  to  sink,  often 
reluctantly  enough,  into  elderliness,  some  final  ebullience 
of  feminine  foolishness  may,  perhaps,  be  allowed  for.  No 
doubt,  Galindo  did  sit  adoring  her,1  and,  no  doubt,  the 
attitude  was  'rather  disgusting'2  to  his  jealous,  brooding 
wife,  but,  certainly,  there  was  egregious  silliness  in  the  follow- 
ing conclusion  of  a  letter  of  Mrs.  Siddons's  to  him,  dated 
October  i8th,  1803:  "I  have  time  only  to  add  that  I  hope 
you  do  not  swear,  and  that  you  keep  your  beautiful  hands 
very  clean ;  remember  me  to  pretty  Julio  [one  of  the  curricle 
horses],  and  now  good  night."  Another  sentence,  equally 
unworthy,  from  the  same  letter,  ran  thus :  "  Oh !  I  have 
suffered  too  much  from  a  husband's  unkindness,  not  to  detest 
the  man  who  treats  a  creature  ill  that  depends  on  her  husband 
for  all  her  comforts." 

Long  before  the  defamatory  '  letter '  appeared,  Mrs.  Siddons 
had  had  cause  to  regret  her  flash  of  superannuated  vanity. 
When,  in  1803,  Kemble  returned  from  Spain,  he  went  to  Mrs. 
Inchbald,  *  like  a  madman,'  saying  that  his  sister  had  been 
*  imposed  on  by  persons,  whom  it  was  a  disgrace  to  her  to 
know!  and  begging  Mrs.  Inchbald  '  to  explain  it  so  to  her.'  It 
is  clear  that  even  John  Philip,  through  whom  Charles  Kemble 
used  to  ask  trembling  favours  of  her,  dared  not  ( stand  up  to ' 
Mrs.  Siddons,  when  it  came  to  a  fight.  In  1809,  Mrs.  Galindo 
published  her  imagined  or  pretended  wrongs,  and  the  press 
stated,  in  its  garbling  way,  that  "John  and  Charles  Kemble 
have  almost  on  their  knees  prayed  Mrs.  Siddons  to  prosecute 

1  Mrs.  Galindo's  letter,  70.  2  Ibid. 


FRIENDS  227 

the  parties,  but  she  has  peremptorily  refused  to  do  so,  saying 
that  it  is  contrary  to  the  principles  of  her  religion?  A  more 
accurate  account  of  the  family's  attitude,  and  her  own,  concern- 
ing what  she  described  to  Whalley  as  '  this  diabolical  business/ 
is  obtainable  from  an  unpublished  letter  written  by  her  to  her 
nephew.  Fortitude  in  difficulties  was  one  of  her  strong 
qualities. 

"  MY  DEAR  HORACE, — Patty  tells  me,  you  have  been  urging 
the  Prosecution  of  these  people  which  surprisd  me  a  good  deal 
now  in  the  first  place,  It  is  the  opinion,  I  do  assure  you  upon 
my  honor,  of  all  my  friends,  that  it  would  be  lowering  myself, 
to  enter  the  lists  with  persons,  the  indecency  of  whose  characters 
is  become  so  notorious,  and  in  the  next  place,  what  would  be 
the  result  of  a  Prosecution  Damages  or  Imprisonment  I  suppose, 
and  in  failure  of  the  first,  what  should  I  gain  by  inflicting  the 
second  ?  There  are  three  children  all  under  nine  years  old,  too, 
that  must  be  reduced  in  either  case  to  a  state  of  wretchedness, 
and  perhaps  absolute  want  of  bread — besides  all  which,  they 
have  already  cost  me  too  much  money,  and  what's  more 
important,  too  much  tranquility,  to  renew  a  subject  so  Shoking, 
and  I  thank  God,  that  all  my  friends  without  one  exception,  are 
decidedly  of  opinion,  that  it  is  as  unnecessary,  as  it  would  be 
HUMILIATING,  HARRASSING,  and  EXPENSIVE.— In  that  my 
nerves  have  been  so  Shattered  by  former  afflictions  and  the 
agitations  of  the  last  four  Months,  that  I  really  believe  my 
health  would  sink  completely,  were  they  to  be  continued ;  I  am 
certain  I  can  endure  no  more,  without  the  most  serious  conse- 
quences ;  and  I  must  take  care  of  myself  for  the  sake  of  a  few 
to  whom  my  health  is  perhaps  of  more  importance  than  it  is  to 
myself. 

"  There  is  no  species  of  suffering  that  I  woud  [not]  prefer  to 
encountering  the  horrible  indecency  of  that  wretched  woman, 
whom  every  one  supposes  to  be  quite  mad,  too.  .  .  .  Show  this 
to  your  father  and  mother  and  now  my  dear  Horace  Speed  you 
well." 


XVI 

HER  ART,  CIRCUMSTANCES,  AND  CHARACTER  IN 
MATURITY 

THE  idea  of  a  double  life — using  the  phrase  with  no 
prejudicial  construction  —  comes  uppermost  in  one's 
mind-picture  of  a  distinguished  player.  To  a  more 
obvious  extent  than  in  the  case  of  any  other  actress  known  to 
history,  Mrs.  Siddons  was,  on  and  off  the  stage, '  two  different 
people/  On  the  stage,  she  was  a  Pythoness,  nightly  hypnotised 
into  passionate  emotions  by  the  sight  of  the  drop-curtain  and 
the  boards.  In  her  home,  she  was,  at  all  events  to  the  casual 
observer,  more  than  a  thought  too  much  a  mere  mother  and 
British  matron,  loving  to  be  seemly  and  of  good  report,  shut  in 
the  tower  of  an  unimaginative  nature.  Had  she  not  been  an 
actress,  she  would  have  made  (such  an  observer  might  have  said) 
an  ideal  Bishop's  lady.  Barchester  would  have  been  glad  of 
her. 

Yet  signs  are  not  lacking  that  the  temperament  and  pro- 
fession of  a  player  modified  Mrs.  Siddons's  attitude  towards  the 
concerns  of  actual  existence.  Her  letters  to  Whalley,  Mrs. 
Pennington,  and  others  leave  little  doubt  that  the  ingrained 
practice  of  impersonating  tragic  characters  induced  tragedy 
ways  of  looking  at  the  more  serious  incidents  of  her  own  life 
and  the  lives  around  her,  and — what  was  more  insidious — set 
up  a  habit  of  confounding  important  issues  with  sentimental, 
exaggerated,  'pretend'  issues.  Especially  in  the  relations 
between  herself,  her  elder  daughter,  and  Lawrence,  after  the 
death  of  Maria,  there  is  evidence  of  the  existence  of  both  these 
relaxing  effects  of  her  vocation  upon  her  commerce  with  life. 
Thanks  to  her  inheritance  of  common  sense,  she  suffered  from 
neither  as  acutely  as  the  generality  of  players:  but,  all  the 


HER  ART,  CIRCUMSTANCES,  AND  CHARACTER     229 

same,  it  would  have  been  impossible  for  her  totally  to  escape 
that  subtle  disintegration  of  the  sense  of  association  which  is, 
and  must  be,  produced  by  perpetually  weeping  without  sorrow, 
embracing  without  love,  stabbing  without  anger,  and  dying 
without  dread.  Her  constant  simulation  of  emotion  did  not 
impair  her  faculty  for  genuine  feeling.  What  it  impaired — in 
her  case,  to  a  relatively  slight  extent — was  the  discernment  of 
whether  feeling  was  employed  proportionately,  or  disproportion- 
ately, to  the  exciting  cause. 

Artists,  in  whatever  genre  and  of  whatever  grade,  reap  from 
their  calling  one  supreme  benefit,  i.e.  a  facility,  while  exercising 
their  art,  to  throw  off  the  pressure  of  personal  evils.  Even  their 
children  are  secondary  interests.  "  I  love  my  wife,"  wrote 
Stevenson,  in  a  letter,  "  I  do  not  know  how  much,  nor  can,  nor 
shall,  unless  I  lost  her,  but  though  I  could  imagine  myself 
without  my  wife,  I  could  not  imagine  myself  without  my  art." 
Johnson,  it  may  be  remembered,  complained  of  Garrick  that, 
because  'the  little  Dog'  was  an  actor,  out  of  sight  was,  with 
him,  out  of  mind,  and  there  was  shrewd  instinct  in  the 
observation. 

During  the  years  now  under  contemplation,  viz.  from 
about  1790  to  1812,  Mrs.  Siddons  had,  broadly  speaking,  left 
behind  her  first  period  of  melodrama,  and  was  fulfilling  her 
second — by  far  the  longer — period  of  Shakespearean  heroic 
characters,  demanding  largo  of  execution.  The  towering 
criminality  of  Lady  Macbeth,  the  primitive  exultation  of 
Volumnia,  the  lofty  indignation  of  Queen  Katharine  were  the 
full  flowers  of  her  art.  People  who  saw  her  at  forty-five,  and 
had  not  seen  her  eighteen  years  earlier,  might,  probably,  think 
her  gifted  to  agitate  and  awe  rather  than  to  charm  and  win. 
As  beautiful,  in  girlhood,  as  Leighton's  captive  Andromache, 
in  maturity,  as  the  Sacerdotessa  Eumachia  at  Naples,  Greece 
or  Rome  seemed  her  native  country,  and  she  truly,  was,  as  the 
satin  scroll  presented  to  Kemble,  on  June  23,  1817,  declared 
her  brother,  '  every  where  contemporary  with  the  august  edifices 
of  the  ancient  world.' 

And  yet,  so  wide  and  certain  was  her  sweep,  she  could  still, 
when  she  willed,  suspend  the  lava  flow  of  great  passions,  and 
melt  the  heart  with  touches  of  the  tender  feminine  sorrow, 


230  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

conjugal  or  maternal,  on  which  her  fame  had  originally  been 
founded.  Living  persons  have  heard  it  said  by  them  of  old 
time  that  no  man  who  saw  Mrs.  Siddons  in  her  meridian  ever 
pronounced  her  name  without  a  tone  and  manner  more  softened 
and  raised  than  his  habitual  discourse,  and  Hazlitt  thought — 
what,  indeed,  can  hardly  be  doubted — that  the  enthusiasm  she 
excited  had  something  idolatrous  about  it.  In  Crabb  Robin- 
son's Diary,  we  find,  under  "  1828,  February  /th" : — 

"  I  read  one  of  the  most  worthless  books  of  biography  in 
existence — Boaden's  (  Life  of  Mrs.  Siddons.'  Yet  it  gave  me 
very  great  pleasure.  Indeed,  scarcely  any  of  the  finest 
passages  in  '  Macbeth '  or  '  Henry  vm '  or  '  Hamlet,'  could 
delight  me  so  much  as  such  a  sentence  as,  'This  evening 
Mrs.  Siddons  performed  Lady  Macbeth,  or  Queen  Katharine, 
or  the  Queen  Mother/  for  these  names  operated  on  me  then 
as  they  do  now,  in  recalling  the  yet  unfaded  image  of  that  most 
marvellous  woman,  to  think  of  whom  is  now  a  greater  enjoy- 
ment than  to  see  any  other  actress." 

The  premier  element  in  Mrs.  Siddons's  influence — never  to 
be  overlooked,  but  difficult  for  any  one  of  a  later  age  to  keep 
fixedly  before  the  mind's  eye — was  her  extraordinary  personal 
loveliness. 

Less  justly  to  '  other  women '  en  bloc  than  to  the  queen  of 
the  stage,  Boaden  remarks,  "  there  was  a  male  dignity  in  the 
understanding  of  Mrs.  Siddons  that  raised  her  above  the  helpless 
timidity  of  other  women."  The  self-command  that  enabled  her 
to  read  prayers  by  her  dying  daughter's  bedside,  'with  the 
utmost  clearness,  accuracy,  and  fervor,'  helped  her  to  the 
intrepidity  she  unfailingly  displayed  in  stage  accidents.  One 
evening,  in  1809,  when  she  was  playing  Lady  Macbeth,  at 
*  Brighthelmstone/  and  Charles  Kemble,  as  Macbeth,  threw  the 
cup  from  him,  in  the  banquet  scene,  with  such  violence  that 
it  broke  the  heavy  arm  of  a  glass  chandelier  on  the  table,  very 
near  her  face,  which,  if  struck,  would  have  been  seriously 
injured,  she  sat  as  if  made  of  marble.  A  more  serious  danger 
menaced  her  when,  playing  Hermione,  in  1802,  she  might  have 
been  burnt,  in  the  statue  scene,  but  for  the  promptitude  of 
a  scene-shifter,  who,  crawling  towards  her,  extinguished  the 
flames  curling  round  her  muslin  drapery.  Him,  by  the  way, 


HER  ART,  CIRCUMSTANCES,  AND  CHARACTER     231 

she  not  only  rewarded  with  money,  but  by  exerting  her  utmost 
influence  to  obtain  remission  of  the  sentence  of  flogging  passed 
on  his  son,  a  military  deserter.  Peril  by  fire  only  threatened, 
whereas  the  first  time  she  acted  Desdemona  in  London,  she 
actually  contracted  acute  rheumatism  from  lying,  in  Act  V., 
between  damp  sheets. 

After  the  habit  of  her  family,  Mrs.  Siddons,  who,  when 
young,  showed  no  tendency  towards  'the  embonpoint!  grew 
massive  with  the  thickening  years.  Every  child  of  man  is 
subject  to  ignominious  accident,  but  it  needed  all  Mrs.  Siddons's 
dignity  to 'ease  off'  in  1808,  a  grievously  ludicrous  situation, 
caused  by  a  chair,  set  for  her  Queen  Katharine,  not  proving 
wide  enough,  so  that,  when  she  rose,  it  adhered  closely  to  her. 
A  slighter  disaster  was  created,  on  another  occasion,  by  an 
ignorant  lad,  who,  being  sent,  on  a  sultry  night,  to  fetch  her 
a  pint  of  ale,  brought  it,  foaming,  on  the  stage,  and  presented 
it  to  Lady  Macbeth,  in  the  sleep-walking  scene.  Mischances 
of  this  sort  were  apter  to  occur  at  a  time  when  stage  subordinates 
— the  plebs  of  the  theatre,  as  Fanny  Kemble  termed  them — 
were  more  uncivilised  than  nowadays. 

At  a  date  when  the  Mob  had  not  yet  grown  into  the  People, 
every  actress  had,  at  times,  to  nerve  herself  to  face  the  music, 
not  only  of  cat-calls,  but  of  actual  battles  at  the  footlights. 
Thoughts  of  pugilism  were  never  far  off;  Lamb  has  told  us 
there  could  scarcely  be  promise  of  a  stage  fight  without  the  pit, 
'as  their  manner  is/  seeming  disposed  to  make  a  ring.  If 
anything  in  the  history  of  theatres  little  repays  attention, 
except  from  the  antiquarian  specialist,  it  is  theatrical  rioting, 
the  bursting  out  of  bonds  of  the  lawless,  and,  frequently, 
irrelevant  feelings  of  the  more  demonstrative  parts  of  the 
house.  Nevertheless,  a  sketch  of  Mrs.  Siddons's  circumstances 
in  her  golden  days  would  be  incomplete  if  it  included  no  notice 
of  the  notorious  '  O.P.  row '  of  1809. 

The  first  stone  of  Smirke's  new  Covent  Garden  was  laid,  by 
the  Prince  of  Wales,  on  December  3Oth,  1808 — an  uncompro- 
misingly wet  day  that  soaked  silk-stockinged,  bare-headed 
Kemble  to  the  skin,  sowed  seeds  of  lasting  illness  in  Thomas 
Harris,  and  uncurled  Mrs.  Siddons's  plume  of  black  feathers. 

During  the  ensuing  spring  and   summer,   '  like   some   tall 


232  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

palm '  the  stately  '  fabric  sprung/  and  Boaden  rivals  Alfred 
Jingle  in  his  ecstatic  mention  of  'the  amazing  structure — the 
vast  patronage — the  private  boxes — the  now  unquestionable 
increase  of  prices/  The  last  item  begs  the  question  of  the 
O.P.  disturbances. 

The  enormous  expense  of  the  new  erection,  viz.  £1 50,000  l 
(only  in  part  justified  by  the  dearness  of  building  materials 
at  the  time),  led  the  proprietors  to  increase  the  prices  of 
admission — to  the  open  boxes,  from  6s.  to  7s.,  to  the  pit, 
from  33.  6d.  to  43.  They  turned  the  whole  third  tier  into 
twenty-eight  private,  or  'annual'  boxes,  each  at  a  rental 
of  £300,  and,  to  entice  noble  patrons  from  the  Opera,  they 
engaged  the  flute-voiced  Roman,  Catalani,  to  sing  two  nights 
weekly.  The  new  gallery,  meanwhile,  had  solid  divisions 
obstructive  to  sight,  and  so  steep  a  rake  that  its  occupants 
could  see  only  the  legs  of  performers  far  back  on  the  stage. 
These  innovations,  combined,  were  the  grievances  that  brought 
about  the  O.P.  (Old  Prices)  Riots.  It  is  possible  to  peruse 
hundreds  of  pages  that  consecutively  describe  this  curious 
strife.  The  fullest  account  is  given  in  a  pamphlet  skit,  entitled 
The  Rebellion,  or  All  in  the  Wrong  \  the  next  fullest,  in  an 
anonymous  '  Life '  of  Kemble,  '  interspersed  with  [scurrilous] 
Family  and  Theatrical  Anecdotes/  published  during  the 
progress  of  the  riots,  with  a  ludicrous  frontispiece  by  one  of 
the  Cruikshanks. 

The  new  Covent  Garden  opened  on  Monday,  September 
1 8th,  with  Macbeth  and  The  Quaker.  The  house  was 
crammed,  "but,"  says  Lawrence,  in  a  letter  to  Farington, 
"presented  a  formidable  appearance  for  the  Women  being 
so  thinly  sprinkled."2  The  instant  Kemble  appeared,  as 
Macbeth,  he  was  greeted  with  hisses,  hoots,  and  groans,  and, 

1  "  A  vast  expense  was  incurred  in  building  and  furnishing  the  new  theatre,  amount- 
ing to  £300,000,  and  upwards,  and  at  the  time  of  opening,  in  1809,  there  was  a  debt 
due  from  the  proprietors  on  account  of  the  former  theatre  amounting  to  ^"30,000. 
To  meet  this  sum  of  .£330,000,  the  joint  funds  in  hand  were  ,£45,000  recovered  for 
insurance,  and  ,£76,000,    or  thereabouts,   raised   by  granting  annuities,  and  free 
admissions  into  the  theatre  to  certain  persons  called  '  new  subscribers.' " — The  Annals 
of  Covent  Garden  Theatre,  by  Henry  Saxe  Wyndham,  i.  338,  1906.     (Quoted  by 
permission  of  Messrs.  Chatto  &  Windus.) 

2  Sir  Thomas  Lawrence's  Letter-Bag,  63. 


HER  ART,  CIRCUMSTANCES,  AND  CHARACTER     233 

thenceforward,  no  sentence  of  the  play  travelled  across  the 
din,  except  (according  to  Stockdale's  Covent  Garden  Journat) 
occasional  isolated  syllables  in  Mrs.  Siddons's  sonorous  tones. 

This  was  the  initiation  of  a  warfare,  imaginatively  variegated 
in  its  methods,  which  lasted  sixty-six  nights.  During  its 
continuance,  Macready's  father  sent  his  son  to  London,  with 
the  superfluous  injunction  to  hear  every  other  good  actor,  but 
not  the  too  easily  imitable  Kemble.  Kemble  continued  to 
act,  although  inaudibly,  but  the  grand  voice  and  presence 
of  his  sister  were  withdrawn,  after  the  disastrous  opening, 
and  did  not  reappear  till  April  24th,  1810. 

The  O.P.  fever  was  catching,  and  spread  from  'a  lawless, 
hir'd,  determin'd,  and  persevering  Minority'  (the  words  used 
by  Lawrence,  who,  in  letters  to  Farington,1  gives  an  interesting 
account  of  the  riots)  to  three  parts  of  the  theatre-frequenting 
public.  The  Times  animadverted  on  the  extravagance  of 
Kemble  and  Mrs.  Siddons's  Macbeth  costumes,  which,  together, 
were  stated  to  have  cost  ;£soo,2  and  said,  commenting 
on  Mrs.  Siddons's  salary,  that  the  Lord  Chief  Justice  sat 
every  day  in  Westminster  Hall,  from  nine  to  four,  for  half 
that  sum. 

There  was  genuine  fun,  and  no  spirit  of  atrocity,  in  the 
riots,  and,  inside  the  theatre,  the  *  O.P.s,'  disciplined  with 
pains  by  their  leaders,  took  every  precaution  to  keep  within 
law-abiding  limits.  The  old  servility  of  English  actors,  at 
which,  in  1782,  Pastor  C.  P.  Moritz,  a  naif  outsider,  marvelled, 
was,  probably,  for  the  most  part,  a  conventional  attitude,  but 
whether  so  or  not,  Kemble  largely  helped  to  put  an  end  to 
the  cringing  forbearance  of  manner  with  which  even  great 
Garrick  had  met  unruly  audiences.  '  Don  John '  went  too 
far  the  other  way,  and  his  high-handedness  in  asking  the 
malcontents,  after  three  nights'  rioting,  'what  they  wanted/ 
exasperated  them  as  much  as  the  introduction  into  all  parts 
of  the  house  of  anti-O.P.  '  gemmen  of  the  fist,  with  their 
Belcher  neckerchiefs,'  who  worked  out  their  admissions  by 
means  of  sticks  and  fists. 

1  Sir  Thomas  Lawrence's  Letter-Bag,  62-68. 

2  This  must  be  an  exaggeration.     In  Vol.    1793-97  of  Winston's  Drury  Lane 
Memoranda,  a  loose  sheet  of  D.L.  accounts  includes  'dress  for  Siddons,  I2l.  I2s.' 


234  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

On  December  2nd,  1809,  Mrs.  Siddons  wrote  to  Mrs. 
Fitzhugh  that,  for  weeks  together,  Mrs.  John  Kemble  had 
lived  with  ladders  at  the  windows,  in  order  to  make  her  escape 
through  the  garden,  in  case  of  an  attack.  Mrs.  Kemble's 
nervous  precaution  was  not  altogether  unjustified,  for,  on 
November  4th,  the  c  O.P.s,'  hundreds  strong,  had  marched, 
late  at  night,  to  Great  Russell  Street,  where,  on  Kemble's 
non-appearance  at  their  summoning  war-whoop,  they  broke 
some  of  his  windows  with  pence,  and  disfigured  the  front  of 
the  house  with  mud.  A  propos>  this  'Impromptu'  appeared 
in  one  of  the  dailies : — 

"When  KEMBLE'S  Ads  the  public  censure  gains, 
They  neither  spare  his  aitches  nor  his  panes  \ " 

A  compromise,  favourable  to  O.P.  claims,  was  arrived  at  on 
I4th-i5th  December.  The  O.P.  final  placard  bore  the  words, 
"  We  are  satisfied."  Mrs.  Siddons,  in  her  letter  of  the  2nd  inst. 
to  Mrs.  Fitzhugh,  thus  characteristically  summed  up  recent 
events  at  Covent  Garden : — 

"...  What  a  time  it  has  been  with  us  all,  beginning  with 
fire,  and  continued  with  fury !  Yet  sweet  sometimes  are  the 
uses  of  adversity.  They  not  only  strengthen  family  affection, 
but  teach  us  all  to  walk  humbly  with  our  God." 

One  finds  it  stated  that  Mrs.  Siddons  lost  £50  a  night 
during  her  enforced  withdrawal  in  the  O.P.  season.  This  does 
not  accord  with  the  following  details,  given  to  Campbell  by 
Henry  Robertson,  the  Covent  Garden  treasurer,  as  to  her 
salary : — 

1804-5.       -£2°  Per  night 

1805-6.       £27  per  night 

1806-7.       30  guineas  per  night 

iSio-ii.     30  guineas  per  night 

1811-12.     50  guineas  per  night. 

The  theatrical  season  covered  about  nine  months,  during 
which  Mrs.  Siddons  acted,  on  an  average,  about  fifty  times. 
Boaden  speaks  of  1785  as  a  year  in  which  she  made  unusual 
exertion — acting  seventy-one  times.  On  the  average  of  fifty 
times,  she  was  earning,  from  her  London  engagement,  from 
1806  to  1811,  £1575  a  year.  In  addition,  she  stood  to  gain, 


HER  ART,  CIRCUMSTANCES,  AND  CHARACTER     235 

each  season,  not  less  than  £1200  to  £1600,  out  of  her  two 
benefits.  Nor  was  this  all.  As  a  rule,  and  when  her  health 
was  normal,  she  utilised  the  months  unemployed  by  London 
in  '  skirring  the  country  round/  taking  the  bread,  it  was  bitterly 
alleged,  out  of  poor  people's  mouths,  i.e.  the  provincial  stock 
actors'.  "  I  hope  to  put  about  iooo/.  into  my  pocket  this 
summer,"  she  writes  from  Liverpool,  in  July,  1807.  Of 
subscriptions  and  *  purses,'  over  and  above  the  straightforward 
price  of  tickets,  we  read  less  as  her  greatness  and  affluence 
become  established  facts.  It  should  be  borne  in  mind  that 
there  were,  throughout  her  career,  occasional  whole  seasons, 
and  parts  of  seasons,  when  she  did  not  appear  on  the  London 
stage  at  all. 

At  the  beginning  of  last  century,  the  receipts  of  a  famous 
actress  bore  a  much  more  favourable  proportion  to  those  of  a 
great  singer  than  to-day.  To-day,  a  serious  actress,  in  the 
first  rank,  may  aspire  to  £150  a  week,  a  favourite  singing 
actress  (musical  comedy)  to  £"200  a  week,  and  clothes.  A 
great  cantatrice  safely  expects  £300  a  night  in  grand  opera. 
During  Mrs.  Siddons's  most  remunerative  season,  she  received 
(assuming  Robertson's  statement,  and  Campbell's  report,  to  be 
accurate)  £52,  los.  a  night,  i.e.  £3302  for  her  season  of  sixty- 
three  nights.1  Mrs.  Billington,  the  Melba  of  those  days,  received 
^"4000  for  the  season,  ending,  for  her,  on  April  1st ;  and,  for 
the  season  ravaged  by  the  O.P.  rioters,  Catalani  had  been 
promised  £75  a  night.  While,  for  the  actress's  chastening,  the 
prima  donna  is  unmistakably  preferred  to  her,  she  enjoys  the 
correspondingly  solid  advantage  that  the  stage  is  one  of  the 
very  few  professions  in  which  women  and  men  work  on  an 
economic  equality.  It  must  also  be  remembered  that  the 
opera  season  is  very  much  shorter  than  the  theatre  season. 

Mrs.  Siddons  showed  herself  markedly  'like  folks'  in  her 
ever-renewed  postponement  of  the  date  at  which  she  could 
'  afford  '  to  retire.  The  '  castle'  she  built  in  1783  was  a  country 
cottage  and  ^10,000.  In  1785,  she  wrote  to  the  Whalleys : 
"  I  have  three  winters'  servitude,  and  then,  with  the  blessing 
of  God,  I  hope  to  sit  down  tolerably  easy,  for  you  know  I  am 
not  ambitious  in  my  desires."  About  a  year  afterwards,  she 

1  Appendix  B. 


236  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

wrote  to  Whalley :  "  I  have  at  last  .  .  .  attained  the  ten  thousand 
pounds  which  I  set  my  heart  upon."  There  is  no  mention  of 
retirement,  and  the  cottage  is  allowed  to  "melt  into  air," 
though  she  describes  herself  as  "now  perfectly  at  ease  with 
respect  to  fortune."  In  July,  1801,  out  of  health,  and  in  the 
rush  of  a  starring  tour,  she  wrote,  from  Preston,  to  Mrs. 
Fitzhugh :  "  I  must  go  on  making,  to  secure  the  few  comforts 
that  I  may  have  been  able  to  attain  for  myself  and  my 
family."  Exactly  six  years  later,  she  wrote,  from  Liverpool 
"If  I  can  but  add  three  hundred  a  year  to  my  present 
income,  I  shall  be  perfectly  well  provided  for;  and  I  am 
resolved  when  that  is  accomplished,  to  make  no  more  positive 
engagements  in  summer."  To  James  Ballantyne,  writing  from 
Leeds,  also  in  July,  1807,  sne  explained  her  position  in  greater 
detail  :— 

".  .  .  I  am  trying  to  secure  to  myself  the  comfort  of  a 
carriage,  which  is  an  absolute  necessary  to  me,1  and  then — then 
will  I  sit  down  in  quiet  to  the  end  of  my  days.  You  will 
perhaps  be  surpris'd  to  hear  that  I  am  not  abundantly  rich, 
but  you  know  not  the  expences  I  have  incurred  in  times  past 
&  the  losses  I  have  sustain'd;  add,  too,  the  necessity  which 
Mr.  Siddons'  ill-health  induces  of  his  living  at  Bath  for  the 
benefit  of  those  waters.  All  these  causes  drain  one's  purse 
beyond  imagination." 

For  seven  years  longer,  Mrs.  Siddons  went  on  work- 
ing. When  she  died,  she  left  under  £50,000.  Clearly,  the 
expenses  of  the  oft-cited  five  children  and  a  husband  had 
been  heavy.  In  1799,  her  daughter,  Sally,  wrote  to  Sally  Bird  : 
"  I  have  always  been  told  that  I  was  to  expect  but  little  in 
the  case  of  such  an  event  {i.e.  marriage],  and  this,  I  believe, 
was  pretty  well  known." 

The  nullity  of  Mr.  Siddons  in  the  world's  estimation  was, 
to  some  extent,  indemnified  at  home  by  his  role  of  finance 
minister.  Mrs.  Siddons  was  given  a  quarterly  allowance,  she 
told  Whalley,  when  he  begged  from  her  £So  to  help  to  relieve 
the  distresses  of  Mrs.  Pennington,  and  urged,  as  an  incentive 
to  generosity,  that  to  Mrs.  Pennington  poor  Maria  had  owed 
the  soothing  comforts  of  her  last  days.  Such  a  reference  to 

1  Hitherto,  we  must  suppose,  she  had  'jobbed.' 


HER  ART,  CIRCUMSTANCES,  AND  CHARACTER     237 

what  she  called  c  a  wound  ...  of  itself  too  apt  to  bleed '  naturally 
hurt  Mrs.  Siddons.  "Indeed,  indeed,  my  dear  sir,  there  was 
no  occasion  to  recal  those  sad  and  tender  scenes  to  soften 
my  nature;  but  let  it  pass."  It  should  be  added  that  she 
cordially  engaged  that  Mr.  Siddons  should  at  once  disburse 
the  £80. 

Apparently,  she  suffered  even  more  anxiety  than  was 
necessary  over  her  husband's  unsatisfactory  connection  with 
Sadler's  Wells  Theatre.  The  idea  of  Sadler's  Wells  strikes 
a  discord  with  the  name  of  Siddons.  With  quaint  forcibleness, 
Princess  Augusta,  in  1797,  expressed  to  Mme  D'Arblay  her 
sense  of  the  incongruity — for  she,  in  addition,  had  jumped  to 
the  conclusion  that  it  was  the  great  tragic  mistress,  not  *  Sid,' 
who  had  bought  into  the  proprietorship — "  Mrs.  Siddons  and 
Sadler's  Wells,"  said  she,  "seems  to  me  as  ill  fitted  as  the 
dish  they  call  a  toad  in  a  hole ;  which  I  never  saw,  but 
always  think  of  with  anger — putting  a  noble  sirloin  of  beef 
into  a  poor,  paltry  batter-pudding  ! "  In  1802,  Siddons's  quarter 
of  Sadler's  Wells  Theatre  was  purchased  for  £1400  by  Thomas 
and  Charles  Dibdin,  conjointly. 

The  most  domestic  of  public  women  lived  her  active  London 
life  of  excitement  and  toil,  for  the  most  part,  in  three  houses, 
14  Gower  Street,  49  Great  Marlborough  Street,  and  Westbourne 
Farm.  She  did  not  move  into  27  Upper  Baker  Street,  the 
house  in  which  she  died,  till  1817.  At  that  date,  she  began, 
like  many  another  parent  of  a  tonish  miss,  to  find  that  a 
far-away  address  was  disadvantageous  for  the  daughter's  social 
opportunities.  To  Mrs.  Piozzi,  the  new  house  itself  seemed 
remote.  She  wrote  to  Sir  James  Fellowes,  soon  after  Mrs. 
Siddons  moved  in,  "...  Adieu !  I  must  dress  to  dine  what 
I  call  out  of  town — the  top  house  in  Baker  Street." 

In  imagining  what  we  may  be  sure  was  the  respectable  maho- 
gany comfort — with  a  man-servant  kept — of  Mrs.  Siddons's  first 
fixed  home  in  London,  we  may  take  into  account  that  the  Gower 
Street  of  her  years,  1784-90,  was  a  less  grim-looking  locality 
than  the  Gower  Street  of  to-day.  Colonel  Sutherland,  at  No.  33, 
sat  under  his  own  vine;  Lord  Eldon,  at  No.  42,  could  pull 
a  peach  off  his  house  wall ;  Mr.  William  Bentham,  at  No.  6 
(Upper  Gower  Street),  used  to  regale  friends  on  Gower-Street- 


238  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

grown  nectarines.  As  late  as  1812,  a  short  lane  led  into  an 
archery  ground,  whence  a  pedestrian  might  walk  uninterruptedly 
through  fields  to  Hampstead  and  Highgate.  The  coloured 
'  Embellishments '  in  Ackermann's  Repository  help  us  to 
reconstruct  the  relatively  little  London  of  that  less  Imperial 
age. 

Mrs.  Siddons  dwelt  at  49  Great  Marlborough  Street  from 
1790  till  the  fall  of  1804,  when,  Mr.  Siddons's  chronic  rheumatism 
rendering  Bath  his  only  tolerable  residence,  she  gave  up  the 
house,  and,  with  Patty  Wilkinson,  went  into  lodgings  in  Prince's 
Street,  Hanover  Square.  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Siddons  had  spent 
some  weeks  of  summer,  1804,  at  Hampstead,  as,  during  1795 
and  1796,  they  had,  with  their  family,  rented  a  'little  nutshell 
upon  Putney  Heath/1  The  summer  of  1790  had  found  the 
casa  Siddons  established,  for  about  seven  weeks,  in  '  little  neat 
lodgings,'  at  Sandgate.  Mrs.  Siddons  loved,  as  she  said,  '  fresh 
air  and  green  fields/  and  a  proceeding  that  gave  her  long- 
lasting  satisfaction  was  her  removal,  in  April,  1805,  from 
London  proper  to  Westbourne  Farm,  or,  as  she,  sometimes, 
alternatively  wrote  it,  Westbourne  House,  Paddington. 

Pulled  down  about  fifty  years  ago,  the  cottage  known  as 
Westbourne  Farm  stood  on  Westbourne  Green,  a  rural  open 
space  off  the  Harrow  Road,  close  to  the  Lock  Bridge.  Allow- 
ing for  the  greater  picturesqueness  of  a  century  ago,  Paddington, 
*  Westbournia/  and  Bayswater  wore  then  something  of  the  aspect 
places  like  Isleworth  and  Heston  wear  now.  Nurserymen's 
grounds  flourished — as  the  numerous  old  pear  and  mulberry 
trees  still  existing,  in  those  districts,  in  back-garden  and 
'Square/  testify — so  did  alehouses,  exact  Morland  pictures, 
screened  by  elms,  flanked  by  long  stone  watering  troughs, 
each  with  its  sign  creaking  overhead.  So,  too,  flourished,  in 
its  season,  haymaking,  as  Mary  Berry's  'Journal/  date  June 
26th,  1809,  calls  to  mind.  Not  very  far  from  Westbourne 
Farm  stood  the  almost  new — Henry  Angelo  says  the  cockney- 
looking — Church  of  St.  Mary's,  Paddington,2  and  the  adjacent 

1  Boyle's  Court  Guide  for  1796  adds  to  *  49  Great  Marlborough  Street'  'Putney 
Heath,  Surrey '  as  Mrs.  Siddons's  country  address. 

2  The  earlier,  Charles  n  church  (in  which  Hogarth  was  married),  was  demolished 
in  1791,  and  the  new  church  erected  a  hundred  feet  south  of  it. 


MRS.  SIDDONS 

BY    HARLOW 


HER  ART,  CIRCUMSTANCES,  AND  CHARACTER     239 

Green,  with  which,  in  clay  and  marble,  Sarah  Siddons  was 
destined  to  become  mortally  associated. 

Westbourne  Farm  was  a  bijou  villa,  large  enough  for  its 
tenant,  her  one  surviving  daughter,  Cecilia,  and  Patty  Wilkinson, 
and  in  its  progressive  beautification,  building  a  studio,  and 
laying  out  a  garden  (with  the  indispensable  shrubbery  of 
1805),  Mrs.  Siddons  took  a  great  deal  of  wholesome  interest. 
To  Ballantyne,  a  couple  of  years  after  her  installation,  she 
wrote,  concerning  '  that  dear  hut  her  home ' : — 

"You  wou'd  scarcely  know  that  sweet  little  spot,  it  is  so 
improved  since  you  saw  it.  I  believe  tho'  I  wrote  you 
about  my  dining-room  and  the  pretty  bedchamber  at  the 
end  of  it,  where  you  are  to  sleep,  unannoyd  by  your  former 
neighbours  in  their  mangers — stalls,  I  shou'd  say,  I  believe. 
All  the  laurells  are  green  and  flourishing;  all  the  wooden 
garden  pales  hidden  by  sweet  shrubs  &  flowers  that  form 
a  verdant  wall  all  round  me.  Oh,  it  is  the  prettiest  little 
nook  in  all  the  world." 

Mr.  Siddons's  turn  for  opuscular  poetry  probably  never 
found  a  more  felicitous  vent  than  when  he  penned  the  follow- 
ing verses,  which,  moreover,  show  him  in  unmistakably 
harmonious  relations  with  a  wife  whose  perpetual  housemate, 
owing  to  adventitious  circumstances,  he  was  no  longer — 

ON  MRS.   SIDDONS'S  COTTAGE  AT  WESTBOURNE. 

i 

Would  you  I'd  Westbourne  Farm  describe, 
I'll  do  it  then,  and  free  from  gall, 
For  sure  it  would  be  sin  to  gibe 
A  thing  so  pretty  and  so  small. 

2 

The  poplar  walk,  if  you  have  strength, 
Will  take  a  minute's  time  to  step  it; 
Nay,  certes,  'tis  of  such  a  length, 
'T would  almost  tire  a  frog  to  leap  it. 

3 

But  when  the  pleasure-ground  is  seen, 
Then  what  a  burst  comes  on  the  view ; 
Its  level  walk,  its  shaven  green, 
For  which  a  razor's  stroke  would  do. 


240  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

4 

Now,  pray  be  cautious  when  you  enter, 
And  curb  your  strides  from  much  expansion ; 
Three  paces  take  you  to  the  centre, 
Three  more,  you're  close  against  the  mansion. 

5 

The  mansion,  cottage,  house,  or  hut, 
Call't  what  you  will,  has  room  within 
To  lodge  the  king  of  Lilliput, 
But  not  his  court,  nor  yet  his  queen. 

6 

The  kitchen-garden,  true  to  keeping, 
Has  length  and  breadth  and  width  so  plenty, 
A  snail,  if  fairly  set  a-creeping, 
Could  scarce  go  round  while  you  told  twenty. 

7 

Perhaps  you'll  cry,  on  hearing  this, 
What !  every  thing  so  very  small  ? 
No,  she  that  made  it  what  it  is, 
Has  greatness  that  makes  up  for  all." 

With  a  practicable  garden,  Mrs.  Siddons  could  give  summer 
evening  parties  in  a  house  so  tiny  that  when  the  big  and 
burly  Prince  Regent  came  to  call,  it  looked  [says  Mrs.  Mair] 
as  if  built  round  those  two.  For  June  ist,  i8ir,  Miss  Berry 
has,  in  her  '  Journal ' :  — 

"  In  the  evening  to  Mrs.  Siddons's  at  Westbourne  Farm. 
Went  before  ten  o'clock.  The  whole  house  was  illuminated, 
on  the  outside  with  coloured  lamps,  and  in  the  inside  with 
candles,  and  every  bush  in  the  garden  with  lamps.  In  short, 
it  was  the  prettiest  little  Vauxhall  that  could  be,  and  a  vast 
many  people  there." 

In  spite  of  Mrs.  Siddons's  having,  for  a  time,  the  Charles 
Kembles  for  next-door  neighbours,  on  Westbourne  Green, 
Westbourne  Farm,  from  its  retired  situation,  had  drawbacks, 
especially  on  winter  evenings.  Thus,  in  an  unpublished  letter, 
of  December,  1814,  to  one  of  her  nieces,  Mrs.  Siddons  wrote: — 

"  Westbourne  ...  at  this  time  of  Year  and  in  these  parlous 
times  is  rather  a  melancholy  residence.  Even  dear  Horace 
[Twiss]  is  afraid  of  coming  to  us,  and  indeed  one  hears  of 
so  many  robberies  &c.  that  I  should  have  more  pain  and 


HER  ART,  CIRCUMSTANCES,  AND  CHARACTER     241 

anxiety  from  his  visits  than  the  great  pleasure  of  his  society 
would  compensate." 

From  Westbourne  Farm  to  Covent  Garden  was  a  longish 
drive,  and,  during  her  farewell  season  (1812)  at  all  events, 
Mrs.  Siddons  took  lodgings  for  the  winter  in  Pall  Mall,  where, 
when  Campbell  called,  'the  long  line'  of  the  carriages  of  her 
other  visitors  '  that  filled  the  street '  at  first  led  him  to  conclude 
there  must  be  '  a  levee  at  St.  James's.' 

We  have  just  seen  that  Mrs.  Siddons  added  a  studio  to 
Westbourne  Farm.  Campbell  relates  that,  one  day,  in  1789, 
when  she  happened  to  be  shopping,  in  Birmingham,  an 
unconscious  salesman  sold  her  a  plaster  bust  of  'the  greatest 
and  most  beautiful  actress  that  was  ever  seen  in  the  world.' 
The  provocation  of  this  unrecognisable  travesty  of  herself 
was  (according  to  her  biographer  attitrt)  the  germ  of  her 
favourite  leisure  occupation.  She  started  modelling  by  trying 
to  make  a  better  likeness  of  herself  than  the  '  image '  she  had 
bought.  In  later  years,  she  must  have  enjoyed  exchanging 
this  story  with  the  kindred  anecdote  concerning  the  Italian 
image  seller  which  her  friend,  Anne  Seymour  Darner,  had  to 
tell  of  her  own  impulsion  into  statuary. 

It  would  be  absurd  to  expect  that  Mrs.  Siddons's  'sculp- 
ing' should  have  had  great  merit.  Excellence  is  not  for 
those  who  take  up  an  art  as  a  pastime.  I  do  not  know 
whether  anything  from  her  hand  survives,1  nor  even  whether 
she  attempted  marble.  Public  Characters  states  that  she 
"  produced,  among  other  things,  a  medallion  of  herself,2  a 
bust  of  her  brother,  John,  Kemble,  in  the  chararacter  of 
Coriolanus,  and  a  study  of  Brutus  before  the  death  of  Caesar." 
It  was  no  disgrace  to  the  greatest  of  English  actresses  that 
she  did  not  get  so  far  in  that  other  harmony  of  sculpture  as 
Mrs.  Darner.  What  is  psychologically  interesting  is  her 
attraction  towards,  and  capacity  for,  'the  round.'  To  judge 
from  her  and  Sarah  II,  it  would  seem  that  the  nerve  centres 
that  control  the  two  plastic  arts,  acting  and  sculpture,  must 
lie  near  together. 

1  A  bust  of  herself  in  the  Garrick  Club  '  is  said  to  be  '  her  work. 

2  An  engraving,  by   Ridley,  from   this  medallion,  is  in  the  Burney  Collection 
(vm.  62),  British  Museum. 

16 


242  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

Apart  from  art,  our  practical,  rarely  idle  lady  was  handy 
with  her  hands.  In  the  early  days,  she  fashioned  her  children's 
clothes;  in  1803,  we  find  her  making  Mrs.  John  Kemble  'a 
Black  Net  for  her  Head';1  in  1813,  sewing  a  ' silken  quilt,' 
for  Campbell.2 

She  by  no  means  missed  life's  average  portion  of  physical 
evils.  Mrs.  Piozzi,  indeed,  wrote,  though  certainly  with 
exaggeration,  on  February  I5th,  1795,  to  the  Rev.  Daniel 
Lysons :  "  Poor  dear  Mrs.  Siddons  is  never  well  long 
together,  always  some  torment,  body  or  mind,  or  both."  Her 
first  recorded  illness  was  in  the  winter,  or  early  spring,  of 
1784,  her  second,  in  1786-87,  when,  for  ten  months,  she  was 
visited  with  'a  miserable  nervous  disorder,'  the  forerunner, 
in  all  probability,  of  her  later  rheumatism  and  the  'terrible 
headaches'  that  afflicted  her  in  advanced  years.  In  1791, 
she  again  had  a  long  spell  of  illness,  cured  by  Harrogate. 

One  of  the  worst  maladies  of  her  life  overtook  her,  when  she 
was  forty-nine,  in  the  form  of  torturing  sciatica  (what  would 
now  be  called  a  neuritis)  'from  the  hip  to  the  toe.'  'Sid,' 
for  his  rheumatism,  and  she,  for  hers,  determined — as  has  been 
seen — to  try  Hampstead,  and  Campbell  records  that,  at  their  first 
meal  there — in  Capo  di  Monte  Cottage,  at  the  end  of  Upper 
Terrace — *  the  old  gentleman,'  looking  at  the  fine  prospect  through 
their  windows,  exclaimed, '  Sally,  this  will  cure  all  our  ailments!'" 
But  Mrs.  Siddons  only  grew  worse,  till,  contrary  to  the  opinion 
of  all  her  doctors,  except  Sir  James  Earle  (whose  assent  was 
negative — it  would  do  her  no  harm),  she  decided  on  electric 
treatment.  This  being  applied,  she  was  '  almost  instantly  cured,' 
but  her  shrieks  when  'the  sparks  touched' — which,  she  said, 
created  a  feeling  '  as  if  burning  lead  was  running  through  her 
veins/  were  enough — so  her  husband  averred — to  make  passers- 
by  burst  into  the  house  to  see  who  was  being  murdered. 

Tuberculosis  killed  one  of  Mrs.  Siddons's  sons,  and  one  of  her 
daughters,  but  she  herself  seems  to  have  been  free  from  any 
taint  of  it.  The  first  mention  of  the  disease  which,  in  the  end, 
proved  fatal  to  her,  occurs  in  May,  1801,  when  she  writes,  from 
Manchester,  to  Mrs.  Fitzhugh,  "  My  face  has  been  very  much 

1  See  a  letter  in  the  Forster  Collection,  Victoria  and  Albert  Museum. 

2  Campbell,  ii.  348. 


HER  ART,  CIRCUMSTANCES,  AND  CHARACTER     243 

enflam'd,  but  is  getting  well  by  the  aid  of  a  Doctor  Ferrier  in 
this  place." x  Considerably  later  in  the  same  year,  Mrs.  Piozzi 
told  Whalley,  "Our  poor  Siddons  complains  sadly  of  her 
mouth — a  strumous2  swelling  in  the  lip,  if  I  understand  Mrs. 
Pennington  perfectly." 

"What  good  does  complaining  do?"  wrote  Mrs.  Siddons. 
She  had  no  tendency  to  make  the  most  of  illness.  "  The  natural 
disposition  to  be  well  will  shortly  restore  me,"  she  said  to  the 
Whalleys,  when  she  was  fifty-four.  This  wholesome  conviction, 
triumphing  even  over  the  untimely  deaths  of  Maria  and  Sally, 
alone  shows  her  elasticity  of  nerve.  On  the  other  hand,  she 
was  feelirigly  able  to  write  to  Lady  Harcourt,  upon  the  death  of 
Queen  Charlotte,  "  I  know  by  sad  experience  how  wonderfully 
the  mind  sustains  the  body  while  exertions  are  necessary,  and 
the  sad  nervous  languid  state  in  which  they  leave  one  when  they 
cease  to  be  so."  It  should  be  added  that  Mrs.  Siddons  was 
never  once  accused  of  'artistic'  irritability.  Through  the 
contrarinesses  of  rehearsals,  she  was  always — no  small  matter 
— even-tempered.  Charles  Young  looked  back  to  the  periods 
during  which  he  had  '  the  good  forture  to  act  with  her,  as  the 
happiest  of  his  professional  recollections.' 

Like  the  rest  of  her  kin,  Mrs.  Siddons  ate  well.  For  this 
statement  we  are  able  to  quote  no  less  an  authority  than  her 
butcher  (who,  also,  to  his  loss,  was  Haydon's),  a  man  named 
Sowerby,  who  descanted  to  Haydon  with  an  expert's  gusto  on 
Mrs.  Siddons's  partiality  for  mutton  chops — 

"...  never  was  such  a  woman  for  chops  I  ...  I  have  fed 
John  Kemble,  Charles  Kemble,  Stephen  Kemble,  Madame 
Catalani,  Morland  the  painter,  and  you,  sir.  Madame  Catalani 
was  a  wonderful  woman  for  sweetbreads;  but  the  Kemble 
family  —  the  gentlemen,  sir  —  rump-steaks  and  kidneys  in 
general  was  their  taste;  but  Mrs.  Siddons,  sir,  she  liked 
chops." 

Further  evidence  of  the  solidity  of  Mrs.  Siddons's  favourite 
vivers  is  supplied  by  two  stories  Scott  loved  to  tell.  In  one,  he 
imitated  the  tragedy  contralto  in  which  she  replied,  to  the 
Provost  of  Edinburgh,  when  he  asked  her  if  the  beef  was  not 

1  Alfred  Morrison  Collection.     Catalogue,  vi.  130. 

2  This  was  a  mistake.     It  was  not  scrofulitic. 


244  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

too  salt,  "  Beef  cannot  be  too  salt  for  me,  my  lord."  Scott's 
other  story  was  to  mimic  the  blank  verse  line  with  which  she 
pulverised  a  young  footman  at  the  Ashestiel  dinner-table — 

"You've  brought  me  water,  boy, — I  asked  for  beer." 

It  was  Tom  Moore  who  said  he  heard  her  observe,  '  in  her 
most  tragic  tone/  at  a  supper-table  at  Lady  Mount-Edge- 
cumbe's,  "  I  do  love  ale  dearly."  With  these  ana  may  be 
placed  a  memory  communicated  to  me  by  Miss  C.  Agnes 
Rooper,  whose  father,  on  a  visit,  as  a  boy,  to  his  aunt,  Lady 
Sunderlin,  wife  of  the  Attorney-General  for  Ireland,  met  Mrs. 
Siddons  at  breakfast,  and  remembered,  for  the  rest  of  his 
life,  her  concentration  of  interest  in  a  not  at  first  get-at-able 
mustard-pot. 

The  quite  credible  statement  made  by  a  contemporary  letter- 
writer  that  Mrs.  Siddons,  when  a  young  mother,  might  be  seen, 
like  Mr.  Hewlett's  Madonna  of  the  Peach-Tree  in  the  tavern, 
feeding  (allaitanf)  her  infant  in  the  greenroom,  ought  only  to 
remind  us  that  there  is  a  date-mark  in  manners  as  surely  as  a 
geography  in  morals.  The  modern  student  is,  perhaps,  slightly 
surprised  at  finding  the  decorous,  the  correct  Mrs.  Siddons  saying, 
"  Good  God  ! "  and,  more  frequently,  "  Bless  me ! "  on  minor 
occasions.  Her  "  I  wish  to  God  I  had  seen  the  Marquis " x 
would  sound  even  worse,  did  we  not  bear  in  mind  the  pre- 
valence, during  her  period,  of  a  careless  use  of  sacred  words,  in 
1  the  best  company,'  when  Miss  Seward  wrote,  in  letters,  "  Good 
God ! "  and  even  Miss  Berry  swore,  while  the  second  lady  in 

the  kingdom  used  to  say  "  d n  me  ! "  and,  at  almost  every 

sentence,  "  I  tell  you  God's  truth."  The  coarse  vixen,  Caroline, 
is,  it  must  be  confessed,  an  extreme  instance.  Even  between 
the  youth  and  old  age  of  Mrs.  Siddons  (thanks,  in  a  measure,  to 
the  influence  of  the  '  Blues ')  considerable  changes  came  over  the 
external  refinement  of  conversation. 

An  actress's  highest  triumph  would  be,  not  that  the  audience 
should  exclaim,  "  Look  at  Ellen  Terry  ! "  "  Here  comes  Duse ! " 
but  "  Ah  !  this  is  Portia  \ "  "  This  is  Marguerite  Gauthier ! "  Just 
that  triumph  the  great  Siddons  achieved.  But  she  went  beyond 
it,  she  fell  on  the  other,  for,  so  habituated  had  she  become  to 

1  Mrs.  Siddons  to  Whalley.     Whalley,  i.  436. 


HER  ART,  CIRCUMSTANCES,  AND  CHARACTER     245 

thinking  with  the  mind  she  divined  in  Queen  Katharine, 
Constance,  and  Volumnia,  to  such  an  extent  had  she  identified 
her  personality  with  sublime  parts,  that,  in  shop,  and  street,  and 
evening  party,  still,  she  talked  in  iambics,  and  still,  people  were 
disposed  to  say,  "  Here  comes  Queen  Katharine  ! "  She  could 
not,  in  manner,  get  clear  of  her  characters ;  she  preserved  the 
style  of  her  subjects,  and  her  style — so  much  the  more  actress 
she — was  herself. 

Therefore  it  was  that  she  reminded  Washington  Irving  of 
Scott's  knights,  who 'carved  the  meat  through  their  gloves  of  steel ' ; 
that  she  stabbed  the  potatoes,  as  Sydney  Smith  vividly  put  it ; 
that  she  said,  "  Give  me  the  bowl ! "  meaning  the  salad  bowl,  in 
a  tone,  and  with  an  emphasis  on  the  pronoun  which  made  every- 
body laugh;  that  she  terrified  the  Bath  draper  with  "Will  it 
wash?" — one  of  the  best-known  sayings  of  modern  times. 
When  Campbell  chaffed  her  as  to  the  clinging,  unconscious 
tragedy  habit,  evinced  in  this  last,  she,  giving  a  further  proof  of 
it,  replied,  "  Witness  truth,  I  did  not  wish  to  be  tragical ! " 
King  Cambyses'  vein  was  so  much  her  second  nature  that  a 
Quarterly  Reviewer,  for  August,  1834,  commenting  on  "Will  it 
wash  ?  "  says  that  every  one  who  ever  saw  Mrs.  Siddons  in 
private  could  parallel  it  by  some  similar  anecdote.  Her  own 
yea  being  yea,  and  her  nay,  nay,  she  was  wont  to  take  equally 
literally  what  she  was  told.  This  is  evidenced  in  the  story  of 
her  comment,  on  being  informed  Mr.  Somebody  was  found  dead 
in  his  bureau,  "  Poor  man !  How  gat  he  there  ? "  We  may 
take  our  choice  between  her  unblinking  vision  of  the  luckless 
person  curled  under  the  slope  of  the  desk  and  her  no  less 
egregious  aspect,  in  a  variant  on  the  story,  presented  to  my 
attention  by  her  great-granddaughter,  Miss  Mair,  which  affirms 
that  to  the  statement,  "  There  were  pigs  [Scotice  for  cans  for 
chimney-pots  for  increasing  the  draught]  on  the  roof,"  Mrs. 
Siddons,  on  a  visit  to  Edinburgh,  calmly  returned,  "  How  gat 
they  there?" 

In  every  artist's  nature  there  is  a  magnetic  element.  This, 
Mrs.  Siddons  left  at  home  when  she  stalked  into  general  society. 
She  lacked,  off  the  stage,  the  player's  mobility,  and  that  gift  of 
charming  universally,  which,  as  a  rule,  actresses  both  enjoy  by 
nature,  and  diligently  cultivate.  She  possessed  no  semblance 


246  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

of  '  ce  petit  rys  follastre*  (Englished  by  Locker-Lampson  into 
'  that  little,  giddy  laugh ')   which  Marot   assigned  to  Madame 
D'Allebret.     She  had  nothing  of  Garrick's  adaptability.     She 
was  marmoreal  where  he  was  supple.     That  she  was  '  difficult ' 
with  strangers  there  can  be  no  question.     The  something  rigid 
in  her  personality,  what  Campbell  calls  '  that   air   of  uncom- 
promising principle  in  her  physiognomy,  which  struck  you  at 
first  sight,  and  was  verified  by  the  longest  acquaintance,'  joining 
with  her  composed  and  careful  utterance,  the  habit  she  learnt 
at  her  mother's  knee,  conspired  to  produce  a  deterrent  effect 
on  slight  acquaintances.     Even  a  caerulean  like  Anna  Seward, 
all   high-flown   ecstasies,  confessed   that,  in   conversation  with 
Mrs.  Siddons,  she  '  never  felt  herself  so  much  awed  in  her  life. 
The   most    awkward    embarrassment    was    the   consequence.' 
Miss  Berry,  who  had,  the  previous  year,  discovered  *  how  much ' 
Mrs.   Siddons   gained   c  by   being    known,'   noted,   in   a  letter 
written,  in  1799,  from  North  Audley  Street,  that  Mrs.  Siddons 
"  was  one  of  a  little  party  we  had  last  night.  .  .  .  She  was  at 
her  very  best ;  had  put  off  the  Catherine,  or  rather  not  put  it  on 
since  her  return  from  Bath,  and  sang  to  us  after  supper,  and 
was  agreeable."     Fanny  Burney's  records  of  her  chance  inter- 
views with  Mrs.  Siddons  are  well  known.     The  diarist  was  not 
naturally  simpatica.      After   their   meeting,  in    1782,   at   Miss 
Monckton's,  she  entered,  "  She  has  a  steadiness  in  her  manner 
and  deportment  by  no  means  engaging."     In  1787,  when  she 
was  commanded  to  receive  the   royal  Reading  Preceptress  at 
Windsor,  she  notes — 

"  I  found  her  the  heroine  of  a  tragedy — sublime,  elevated, 
and  solemn;  in  voice,  deep  and  dragging;  and  in  conversation, 
formal,  sententious,  calm,  and  dry.  I  expected  her  to  have  been 
all  that  is  interesting,  the  delicacy  and  sweetness  with  which 
she  seizes  every  opportunity  to  strike  and  to  captivate  upon 
the  stage  had  persuaded  me  [etc.,  etc.]  .  .  .  but  I  was  very 
much  mistaken."1 

It  was  on  this  latter  occasion  that  Mrs.  Siddons,  in  the 
midst  of  being  '  formal,  sententious,  calm,  and  dry,'  staggered 
Miss  Fanny  by  impulsively  saying  that  her  Cecilia  was  the  one 
part  she  really  longed  to  impersonate. 

1  See,  also,  D'Arblay,  iv.  301. 


HER  ART,  CIRCUMSTANCES,  AND  CHARACTER     247 

Mrs.  Siddons  had  no  small  talk,  and,  from  absorption  in 
what  she  rightly  designated  her  '  own  pressing  avocations/  and 
the  quiet  confidence  her  unparalleled  self-made  position  could  not 
fail  to  give  her,  she  never  took  the  pains  lesser  speechless  folk 
take  to  amend  this  deficiency.  In  all  probability,  she  would 
as  much  have  scorned  to  lay  herself  out,  in  private,  to  propitiate 
chance  strangers  as,  by  any  cheap  trick,  on  the  stage,  to  catch 
(as  Foote  has  it  in  his  Treatise  on  the  Passions)  ( an  ignorant 
Bene  from  the  hard  Hands  of  the  Gallery.'  When  moved 
thereto,  she  would,  occasionally,  go  out  of  her  way  to  snub  the 
c  mostly  fools,'  as,  when,  a  lady,  remarking  in  her  hearing,  while 
gazing  at  the  mountains  at  Penmaenmawr,  "  This  awful  scenery 
makes  me  feel  as  if  I  were  only  a  worm,  or  a  grain  of  dust,  on 
the  face  of  the  earth,"  she  turned  round,  more  awful  than  the 
prospect,  and  said, "  I  feel  very  differently."  Mrs.  Piozzi  blamed 
her  for  '  never  voluntarily  holding  converse  with  coarse  or 
common  people.'  On  her  incapacity  for  laying  aside  her  chopine, 
Campbell  makes  the  following  indulgent,  probably  just, 
remark : — 

"This  singularity  made  her  manner  susceptible  of  caricature. 
I  know  not  what  others  felt,  but  I  own  that  I  loved  her  all  the 
better  for  this  unconscious  solemnity  of  manner ;  for,  independ- 
ently of  its  being  blended  with  habitual  kindness  to  her  friends, 
and  giving,  odd  as  it  may  seem,  a  zest  to  the  humour  of  her 
familiar  conversation,  it  always  struck  me  as  a  token  of  her 
simplicity.  In  point  of  fact,  a  manner  in  itself  artificial,  sprung 
out  of  the  naivete  of  her  character." 

Lawrence's  testimony  is  the  same.  Writing,  on  November 
22nd,  1829,  to  John  Julius  Angerstein,  as  to  the  success  of 
Fanny  Kemble,  he  adds  : — 

"  Her  manner  in  private  is  characterised  by  ease,  and  that 
modest  gravity  which  I  believe  must  belong  to  high  tragic 
genius,  and  which,  in  Mrs.  Siddons,  was  strictly  natural  to  her 
though,  from  being  peculiar  in  the  general  gaiety  of  society,  it 
was  often  thought  assumed." 

Stothard,  who,  without  much  intimacy,  seems,  instincdvely, 
to  have  understood  her,  was  even  more  emphatic  as  to  her 
naturalness  than  either  Campbell  or  Lawrence.  "...  it  would 
have  been,"  he  said,  "  as  out  of  character  in  her  to  have  formed 


248  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

her  manners  by  those  of  the  ordinary  rate  of  persons,  as  it 
would  be  in  a  very  tall  woman  to  walk  stooping." 

Frosty  towards  outsiders,  but,  as  we  have  repeatedly  seen, 
sweet  as  summer  to  people  she  valued,  and  knew  well,  Mrs. 
Siddons  showed  at  her  best  in  her  home,  and,  there,  was  so  far 
from  arrogance  that  once  —  the  trait  is  communicated  by 
Campbell — she  sent  for  a  servant  she  had  undeservedly  rebuked, 
and,  before  her  family,  begged  his  pardon. 

Far  enough  from  being  a  witty,  or  a  frolicsome,  lady,  she, 
like  the  rest  of  us,  appreciated  what  to  her  appeared  '  comical.' 
When,  with  Patty  Wilkinson,  she  visited  Shakespeare's  birth- 
house,  where  a  loquacious  '  shew- woman '  tried  to  '  palm  upon 
their  credulity  a  little  monster,  with  a  double  tongue,  as  a 
descendant  of  Shakespeare,  she  remarked  that  nature  had  en- 
dowed the  '  shew-woman '  herself  '  with  a  double  allowance  of 
tongue.'  Another  instance  of  Mrs.  Siddons's  playfulness  takes 
the  form  of  an  unpublished  letter  to  her  nephew,  which  runs,  in 
her  resolute,  legible  handwriting : — 

"  MY  DEAR  HORACE, — Your  Manuscript  is  very  graciously 
Accepted.— Yours  aff^  S.  SlDDONS 

"EDiN.  March -2.1th" 

Mrs.  Siddons  could  afford  to  confess  herself  '  a  matter-of- 
fact  woman,'  made  of  f  inability  and  simpleness ' ;  but  it  was 
harsh  of  the  precocious  girl  who  twas,  without  doubt,  retro- 
spectively jealous  of  her  aunt,  to  write  that  she  "  was  what  we 
call  a  great  dramatic  genius,  and  off  the  stage  gave  not  the 
slightest  indication  of  unusual  intellectual  capacity  of  any  sort." 
The  expressive,  perspicuous  letters  Mrs.  Siddons  wrote,  her 
amateur's  practice  of  sculpture,  and  her  friendships  with  women 
like  Mrs.  Darner  and  Mrs.  Opie,  and  with  such  men  as  Scott 
and  Windham  alone  go  far  to  disprove  Fanny  Kemble's 
summary  judgment.  Probably,  no  woman  ever  possessed  a 
more  clear-cut,  collected,  and  competent  mind  than  Mrs. 
Siddons — in  spite  of  a  canard  which,  she  told  Mrs.  Piozzi,  in 
1796,  was  going  about  that  she  was  under  confinement  for 
insanity!  Whether  she  possessed  all  the  qualities  her  friend, 
Burke,  styled  c  the  soft  green  of  the  soul '  is  less  certain. 


XVII 
GREAT  MEN  AND  GREAT  LADIES 

MRS.  SIDDONS'S  years,  covering  most  of  the  second 
half  of  the  eighteenth  century,  and  outlasting  the  first 
quarter  of  the  nineteenth,  were  practically  coeval  with 
the  reign  of  George  III  and  the  regency  and  reign  of  George  IV. 
Among  the  vagaries  that  preluded  George  Ill's  second  attack 
of  insanity  (1788)  was  his  giving  Mrs.  Siddons  a  blank  paper, 
with  his  signature  at  the  foot.  This  carte  blanche  Mrs.  Siddons, 
showing  her  instinctive  good  sense  in  emergencies,  at  once 
handed  to  Queen  Charlotte.  By  1788,  she  was  habituated  to 
the  thrilling  vibrations  of  'Your  Majesty'  and  'Your  Royal 
Highness.'  Baby  Princess  Amelia,  who,  in  1783,  extended  her 
hand  when  the  great  actress  ecstatically  breathed  a  wish  to  kiss 
her,  had  helped  to  teach  her  Court  etiquette. 

Both  King  and  Queen,  we  have  seen,  showed  themselves 
her  steady  patrons.  They  disliked  tragedy,  but  saw  her,  during 
January,  1783,  in  five  roles.  The  King  looked  through  his 
monocular  opera  glass  till  he  could  not  see  for  tears,  and 
gracious,  punctilio-exacting,  little  Charlotte  (who,  in  later  years, 
reminded  Lawrence  of  an  old  grey  parrot)  avowed  that,  in  order 
not  to  weep,  she  sometimes  found  it  necessary  to  turn  her  back 
to  the  stage,  for,  *  inteed,'  Mrs.  Siddons's  acting  was  '  doo 
desagreble.' 1  In  1785,  Fanny  Burney  (before  her  incarceration) 
was  staying  with  Mrs.  Delany,  and  heard  Royal  George,  when 
he  called,  talk  of  Mrs.  Siddons,  *  with  the  warmest  praise.'  "  I 
am  an  enthusiast  for  her,"  he  cried,  "quite  an  enthusiast. 
I  think  there  was  never  any  player  in  my  time  so  excellent — not 
Garrick  himself;  I  own  it!"  In  this  same  year,  shortly  before 

1  So,  in  the  original  MS.   only  of  his   biography  of  Mrs.    Siddons,   Campbell 

reproduced  the  Queen's  pronunciation. 

249 


250  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

the  birth  of  George  Siddons,  to  whom  the  Heir  to  the  Throne 
stood  godfather,  Mrs.  Siddons  wrote  to  Whalley:  "...  the 
other  day  her  Majesty  very  graciously  sent  me  a  box  of 
powders,  which  she  thought  might  be  of  use  to  me,  and  which 
she  said  I  need  not  be  afraid  of,  as  she  always  took  them  herself 
when  in  my  situation.  These  very  superior  honours,  as  you 
may  suppose,  create  me  many  enemies." 

At  Weymouth,  where  the  King  and  Queen  went  *  a-wam- 
bling  about  like  the  most  everyday  old  man  and  woman,'  and 
used  to  walk  to  the  theatre  from  Gloucester  House,  Mrs. 
Siddons  acted  before  them.  It  was  their  holiday  season,  and, 
preferring  to  do  herself  injustice  in  comedy  than  that  they 
should  be  bored  by  tragedies,  she  played  Rosalind,  Lady 
Townly,  and  Colman's  Mrs.  Oakley. 

Mrs.  Siddons  frankly  admired  the  '  deplorable  Regent,'  who, 
it  must  be  said,  was  uniformly  attentive  and  affable  to  her,  and, 
thereby,  added  a  fourth  to  his  three  claims  upon  respect  in  that 
he  made  much  of  Scott,  admired  Jane  Austen,  and  naturalised 
French  cookery.  Mrs.  Siddons  was  never  at  Brighton  without 
being  a  guest  at  the  Pavilion — that  symbol  of  late  eighteenth 
and  early  nineteenth  century  '  smartness '  out  of  town.  In  1798, 
writing  from  Brighton,  she  told  a  correspondent  she  did 
not  like  the  prospect  of  meeting  Lady  Jersey  at  supper,  but, 
realising  that  a  refusal  would  displease  the  individual  whom 
Lawrence's  friend,  Farington,  seeking  favours,  wrote  of  with  a 
capital  letter — '  Him '  and  '  His ' — she  swallowed  her  scruples, 
and  merely  said  (what  everybody  thought)  that  Lady  Jersey 
would  look  handsome  if  she  would  not  affect  at  forty-eight  to 
be  eighteen.  A  large  gold  repeater,  given  by  the  Prince  Regent 
to  George  Siddons,  is  now  in  the  possession  of  Miss  Harriot 
Siddons,  to  whom  it  was  left  by  her  cousin,  Colonel  W.  Siddons 
Young. 

In  less  than  a  month  from  the  date  of  her  uprise  in  1782,' 
Mrs.  Siddons  had  completely  secured — as  Horace  Walpole's 
discernment  did  not  fail  to  note — the  admiration  of  those  Tate 
Wilkinson  designates  '  people  of  the  great  lead.'  On  December 
4th,  one  of  the  newspapers  remarked  that '  on  a  Siddons  night/ 
'  Drury  Lane  looked  more  like  a  meeting  of  the  House  of  Lords 
than  a  theatre — four  stars  in  one  box,  and  scarcely  any  box 


GREAT  MEN  AND  GREAT  LADIES  251 

without  one ! '  Mrs.  Siddons's  benefit  book,  '  as  it  lay  open 
in  the  lobby/  was  spoken  of  as  '  the  Court  Guide.'  Every 
attempt  being  fruitless  to  procure  boxes  at  short  notice,  ladies, 
to  behold  her,  were  willing  to  struggle  through  what  one  of 
them  termed  'the  terrible,  fierce,  maddening  crowd  into  the  pit.' 
And  Mrs.  Siddons  was  the  fashion,  not  only  for  a  season  or 
two,  but  throughout  her  life.  Boaden,  holding,  in  his  Life  of 
Mrs,  Jordan^  no  brief  for  the  tragic  lady,  rather  vividly  says 
that  she 

"maintained  a  distance  in  her  manners  that  irritated  the 
self-love  of  those  with  whom  she  mixed  in  the  business  of  the 
stage ;  and  she  was  supposed  to  shew  rather  strongly  the  con- 
sciousness of  living  familiarly  with  the  higher  orders.  She  had 
in  fact  monopolized  their  attention  and  their  patronage.  Her 
nights  of  performance  alone  were  well  attended,  and  she  had 
two  benefits  each  season,  for  which  every  thing  fashionable 
reserved  itself;  and  the  benefits  of  others,  if  she  did  not  act  for 
them,  were  reduced  nearly  to  the  actor's  private  connexion,  and 
many  were  disappointed  in  their  little  circles,  by  an  apology 
that  ended  with  'You  know  we  must  go  on  Mrs.  Siddons's 
night,  and  we  then  leave  town  directly." 

In  an  age  when  the  House  of  Commons,  on  a  motion  by 
Pitt,  adjourned,  and  went  down  to  the  theatre,  to  see  Betty  play 
Hamlet,  it  is  no  wonder  that  Mrs.  Siddons  seemed  an  integral 
part  of  the  national  life.  Pitt  was  one  of  her  earliest  admirers, 
and  his  tall,  attenuated  figure — he  was  known,  among  Foxites, 
as  '  the  Devil's  darning-needle ' — was  as  familiar  a  sight  on  her 
first  nights  as  was  the  misshapen  figure  of  Gibbon,  before  he 
left  Bentinck  Street  to  return  to  Lausanne.  As  has  already 
been  said,  Fox,  to  whose  noble  zest  the  occasion  must  have  been 
meat  and  drink,  watched  the  curtain  first  rise  on  the  most 
wonderful  Shakespearean  impersonation  of  all  time,  Mrs. 
Siddons's  Lady  Macbeth,  and,  in  thinking  over  the  personal 
traits  of  that  sanguine,  magnetic  member  of  her  audience,  one 
reflects  that  in  one  characteristic,  at  least,  he  resembled  her,  for 
Rogers  says  that  Fox,  too,  conversed  little  in  London  mixed 
society,  but,  at  his  own  house,  with  intimate  friends,  would  talk 
on  for  ever,  with  the  openness  and  simplicity  of  a  child. 

In  Mrs.  Siddons's  autobiographical  Memoranda,  we  read — 


2$2  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

"He  [Reynolds]  always  sat  in  the  orchestra;  and  in  that 
place  were  to  be  seen,  O  glorious  constellation  !  Burke,  Gibbon, 
Sheridan,  Windham,  and,  tho  last  not  least,  the  illustrious  Fox. 
.  .  .  All  these  great  men  would  often  visit  my  dressing-room, 
after  the  play,  to  make  their  bows,  and  honour  me  with  their 
applauses.  I  must  repeat,  O  glorious  days  !  " 

Windham's  exceeding  admiration  of  Mrs.  Siddons's  acting 
is  forcibly  illustrated  by  a  simple  statement  in  his  Diary, 
under  date,  February  i$th,  1785 — "Drove  from  the  House  of 
Commons,  without  dining,  to  Drury  Lane,  to  Mrs.  Siddons  in 
'Lady  Macbeth.'"  Personally,  Windham  liked  her  greatly. 
Under  '  May  24th,  1787,'  he  wrote,  "  Went  out,  in  order  to  learn 
from  Miss  Adair  whether  I  was  to  sup  with  her  or  not — or 
rather  to  put  myself  in  the  way  of  being  asked,  having  been  told 
by  Mrs.  Siddons  the  day  before  that  she  was  to  sup  there." 
What  Scott  said  of  writers,  that  the  value  of  having  access  to 
persons  of  talent  and  genius  was  the  best  part  of  their  preroga- 
tive is  even  truer  of  leading  actors. 

Among  the  higher  compliments  paid  Mrs.  Siddons  was 
her  being  celebrated,  by  name,  in  his  Reflections  on  the  French 
Revolution,  by  Edmund  Burke.  If  that  affluent  mind  derived 
delight  from  her  acting,  he,  on  his  side,  melted  her  to  tears, 
as  she  sat,  in  February  1788,  beside  Mrs.  Sheridan,  and 
listened  to  the  purple  superlatives  of  his  impeachment  of 
Warren  Hastings,  in  Westminster  Hall.  "There,"  says 
Macaulay,  "Siddons  .  .  .  looked  with  emotion  on  a  scene 
surpassing  all  the  imitations  of  the  stage." 

One  of  the  prettiest  episodes  of  Mrs.  Siddons's  life  was 
brought  about  by  Reynolds's  apotheosis  of  her  as  the  Tragic 
Muse,  when  the  first  P.R.A.  inscribed  his  name  on  the  border 
of  her  drapery  (as  he  had  done  on  that  of  Lady  Cockburn) 
and,  upon  her  looking  into  the  border  to  examine  the  *  Joshua 
Reynolds  Pinxit  1784,'  which,  at  a  distance,  she  took  to  be 
a  golden  pattern,  he  uttered  the  gracious  sentence  that  'he 
could  not  lose  the  honour  this  opportunity  afforded  him  of 
going  down  to  posterity  on  the  hem  of  her  garment.'  He, 
likewise,  she  recollected — when  she  described,  in  later  years, 
those  memorable  sittings  —  guaranteed  the  colours  of  her 
portrait  never  to  fade  as  long  as  the  canvas  held  together. 


GREAT  MEN  AND  GREAT  LADIES  253 

"  Ascend  your  undisputed  throne ! "  he  said,  as  he  led  her 
to  the  platform  in  his  painting-room,  the  gusto  grande  in 
which  he  drew  her  already  seething  in  his  brain.  "The 
picture  kept  him  in  a  fever,"  deposed  Northcote,  his  whilom 
pupil.  Her  sittings  took  place,  presumably,  late  in  I783,1 
and  while  she  herself  was,  temporarily,  residing  in  Leicester 
Fields. 

The  idea  of  an  actress  personifying  the  Tragic  Muse 
had  been  in  the  air  since  Garrick's  Jubilee,  and,  in  that 
character,  Romney,  in  1771,  painted  Mrs.  Yates.  In  various 
provincial  Jubilee  revivals,  Mrs.  Inchbald,  in  her  acting  days, 
walked,  she  tells  us,  'in  the  always  complimentary  part  of 
the  Tragic  Muse.'  Mrs.  Barry,  at  Drury  Lane,  and  Mrs. 
Bellamy,  simultaneously,  at  Covent  Garden,  had  each  supported 
this  symbolic  role  at  the  first  London  revivals,  in  1769,  of 
the  Stratford  celebration.  It  is  small  wonder  that,  on 
November  i8th,  1785,  a  year  and  a  half  after  Reynolds's 
masterpiece  was  exhibited,  Mrs.  Siddons  herself  condescended 
to  be  wheeled  across  the  stage  as  Melpomene,  in  an  attitude 
that  reminded  every  one  of  the  picture.  Even  a  Mrs.  Siddons 
must  have  been  elated  by  such  a  portrait — such  a  superb 
idealisation  of  herself  and  her  profession.  Lawrence's  de- 
scription of  it,  in  his  Presidential  address  to  the  Academy 
students,  in  1824,  as  'a  work  of  the  highest  epic  character, 
and  indisputably  the  finest  female  .portrait  in  the  world,' 
elicited  from  Mrs.  Siddons  (<zt.  69)  this  letter : — 

"  ARRAN  LODGE,  BOGNOR 
Deer.  23,  1824 

"  Situated  as  I  am,  with  respect  to  the  glorious  Picture 
so  finely  eulogised,  and  with  its  illustrious  Panegyrist,  what 
can  I  say,  where  should  I  find  words  for  the  various  and 
thronging  ideas  that  fill  my  mind  ?  It  will  be  enough,  how- 
ever, to  say  (and  I  will  not  doubt  it  will  be  true  to  say)  that 
could  we  change  persons,  I  would  not  exchange  the  Grati- 
fication in  bestowing  this  sublime  tribute  of  praise,  for  all 
the  fame  it  must  accumulate  on  the  memory  of  the  Tragick 
Muse. — Yours  most  truly,  S.  SIDDONS"2 

1  Reynolds's  1783  pocket-book  is  missing.     In  the  pocket-book  for  1784,  Mrs. 
Siddons's  name  does  not  appear  among  his  sitters. 

2  Sir  Thomas  Lawrence's  Letter  Bag^  189. 


254  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

Michael  Angelo's  Prophet  Esaias1  of  the  Sistine  Chapel, 
with  the  two  attendant  figures  behind,  gave  the  greatest  of 
English  figure-painters  an  inspiration  for  the  mise- en-scene  of 
his  diva  Siddons,  seated,  amid  lightning,  in  the  empyrean, 
her  footstool  on  rolling  clouds.  Reynolds's  strong  taste 
for  an  indefinite,  goddess-like  style  of  dress,  in  art,  reasons 
for  which  he  adduced  in  his  fourth  Discourse,  here  reached 
— for  the  attire  of  a  real  woman — its  acme.  It  is  some  time 
since  'the  Tragic  Muse'  left  Grosvenor  House  to  be  shown  in 
a  public  exhibition,  but  it  only  needs  to  be  seen  in  a  gallery 
lighted  from  above  to  make  its  superiority  to  the  Dulwich 
replica  more  than  ever  apparent.  Wherever  the  great  picture 
hangs,  it  dominates  the  room,  and  bears  out  one  of  Burke's 
comments  on  Reynolds  that  he  appeared  to  descend  to 
Portraiture  from  a  higher  sphere. 

The  lady  who  was,  after  Mrs.  Siddons,  the  next  most 
famous  sitter  to  eighteenth  -  century  portrait  -  painters, 
Georgiana,  Duchess  of  Devonshire,  was  Mrs.  Siddons's  early 
patroness,  at  Bath,  and  continued  to  be  her  friend.  Mrs. 
Siddons,  in  1783,  recommended  Holcroft  to  her  Grace, 
and  Holcroft  gives  an  amusing  account  of  the  interview 
which,  in  consequence,  he  had  with  that  vraie  grande  dame. 
'  Fair  Devon/  as  the  poets  called  her,  was  a  declared  admirer 
of  the  Kembles,  and  when,  in  1803,  Covent  Garden  passed 
into  Kemble  hands,  she  became  the  renter  of  one  of  the 
private  boxes,  others  of  which  were  taken  by  the  Northumber- 
lands,  the  Abercorns,  the  Egremonts,  and  Lord  and  Lady 
Holland. 

Like  Hugh  Percy,  second  Duke  of  Northumberland,  John 
James,  ninth  Earl  and  first  Marquis  of  Abercorn,  was  more 
the  John  Kembles'  friend  than  Mrs.  Siddons's.  He  was 
that  eccentric  grand  seigneur,  proud,  almost  to  the  point  of 
mania,  whose  groom  of  the  chambers  had  to  fumigate  the 
rooms  he  occupied  after  liveried  servants  had  been  in  them, 
and  forbid  the  chambermaids  to  touch  their  master's  sacred 
bed,  except  in  white  kid  gloves.  Surviving  till  1818,  this 
magnifico  lived  to  see  strange  sights.  Even  by  1800,  the 
ancien  regime  was  disintegrate.  The  *  glorious  bonfire'  in 

1  Or,  almost  equally,  the  Joel. 


GREAT  MEN  AND  GREAT  LADIES  255 

France  had  burnt  up  its  hair-powder,  and  Lord  Abercorn 
was  already  out  of  date.  Alive  enough,  however,  to  be  dubbed 
'  Bluebeard '  for  marrying  a  third  wife,  Lady  Anne  Hatton,  a 
widowed  daughter  of  the  second  Earl  of  Arran. 

Of  all  the  people  high  in  place  who  contrived — principally, 
in  their  country  houses — to  see  a  good  deal  of  Mrs.  Siddons 
during  the  brief  recesses  her  alternating  London  and  provincial 
seasons  allowed,  Lady  Harcourt  should  be  first  named.  As 
early  as  1786,  Mrs.  Siddons  told  Whalley,  "  In  September,  I 
shall  be  as  usual  at  Nuneham,  near  Oxford,  a  seat  of  Lord 
Harcourt's."  Lady  Harcourt  was  born  Elizabeth,  daughter 
of  Lord  Vernon.  She  married  George  Simon,  Viscount  Nune- 
ham, who,  in  1777,  became  Earl  Harcourt.  He  had  large 
property,  looked  French,  possessed  a  fine  taste  in  the  arts, 
and  etched  so  as  to  win  encomiums  from  Horace  Walpole. 
Mrs.  Siddons  spoke  of  him  as  c  a  very  ODD  respectable  man/ 
but  her  disparaging  tone  may  possibly  be  traced  to  the  coldish 
estimate  her  noble  friend  had  formed  of  her  Lady  Macbeth 
(see  p.  1 68). 

Nuneham  Park  was  habitually  ordered  in  such  a  style  that 
when,  in  1786,  the  King  and  Queen  and  several  of  their 
children  paid  a  visit  there,  from  Windsor,  the  Harcourts  could 
invite  them  to  stay  on  three  days,  entertaining  them  adequately 
a  rimprevu.  This  was  the  identical  visit  to  Nuneham  of  which 
Fanny  Burney,  who  came  in  the  Royal  suite,  gives  a  dismal 
obverse  in  the  second  volume  (Mr.  Austin  Dobson's  edition) 
of  her  immortal  work.  It  was  amid  Nuneham's  splendid 
hospitalities  that  Mrs.  Siddons  first  encountered  Gray's  Mason, 
Divine  and  Poet,  who  had  expressed  himself  anything  but 
an  admirer.  It  was  a  critical  meeting,  but  how  was  a  poet 
to  resist  the  present  persuasiveness  of  the  most  magnificently 
lovely  woman  of  her  day?  He  was  very  soon  practising  a 
piano  duet  with  her,  and  giving  her  his  arm  round  the  gardens. 
Lady  Harcourt  was  a  Lady  of  the  Bedchamber,  and  took  part 
in  receiving  Mrs.  Siddons  at  Windsor  when  she  went  to 
read  there. 

Mrs.  Siddons  nowhere  expresses  any  consciousness  of 
constraint  or  weariness  on  visits — nothing  of  what  the  sharper- 
sensed  Lady  Morgan  meant  when  she  said,  "people  are  mis- 


256  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

taken  as  to  the  pleasures  of  a  large  society  in  great  houses — 
there  is  an  inevitability  about  it  that  is  a  dead  bore"  Turtle 
and  venison,  and  pines  and  grapes,  and  lords  and  ladies  every 
day  agreed  passing  well  with  the  woman  who  had  begun  life 
as  an  obscure  player  girl.  She  disliked  being  snubbed,  which, 
perhaps,  is  one  reason  why  we  do  not  read  of  her  'being 
frightened  at  H.H.,'  as  Sydney  Smith  described  the  process 
of  being  entertained  in  Lord  Holland's  famous  mansion,  where 
her  brother  was  on  the  visitors'  list. 

We  have  already  seen  her  in  friendly  intercourse  with  the 
second  Earl  of  Hardwicke.  The  Yorke  family  touched  eighteenth- 
century  life  at  every  point,  and  that  rich  collection  of  docu- 
ments, the  Hardwicke  Papers,  purchased  by  the  Government 
from  the  late  Earl  of  Hardwicke,  contains  a  number  of  letters 
and  short  notes  from  Mrs.  Siddons,  some  written  by  her 
husband's  hand. 

Among  ladies  who  were  friends,  and  not  only  acquaintances, 
of  Mrs.  Siddons,  there  was  no  more  remarkable  figure  than  the 
Hon.  Mrs.  Darner.  At  twenty-eight,  the  childless  widow  of  a 
fool  of  fashion,  Mrs.  Darner,  who,  on  her  own  side,  or  her 
husband's,  was  related  to  half  the  peerage,  was  a  fervent  demo- 
crat. To  her,  all  things  were  dross  compared  with  the  practice 
of  sculpture,  and  at  that  she  plodded,  through  a  long  life.  For 
the  most  part,  her  work  was  roughly  finished — Rodinesque. 
The  masks  of  Thame  and  Isis  on  Henley  Bridge,  and  the 
sculptured  decoration  of  the  bridge  at  Banff  are  from  her 
'classic  chisel,'  and  she  made  statues,  or  busts,  of  George  in 
and  George  IV,  Fox,  Nelson,  Sir  Joseph  Banks,  Mrs.  Siddons 
(a  bust,  as  the  Tragic  Muse),  Miss  Berry,  herself,  and  other 
well-known  people.  In  September,  1794,  her  kinsman,  Horace 
Walpole,  had  an  early  glimpse  of  her  bust  of  Mrs.  Siddons,  and, 
said  he,  "  a  very  mistressly  performance  it  is  indeed."  It  was, 
in  all  probability,  a  copy  of  this  that  Mrs.  Siddons,  in  the  same 
year,  presented  to  Mrs.  Inchbald,  spoken  of  by  the  latter  as  by 
Mrs.  Darner.  A  forgotten,  but  agreeable,  book,  The  Queens  of 
Society,  by  Grace  and  Philip  Wharton,  states  that  Mrs.  Darner 
gave  three  busts,  representing  Mrs.  Siddons  and  the  two 
Kembles,  to  her  friends,  the  Greatheeds.  Three  such  busts,  in 
plaster,  are  now  in  the  hall  at  Guy's  Cliffe,  but  one  of  them,  at 


GREAT  MEN  AND  GREAT  LADIES  257 

least,  that  of  Mrs.  Siddons,  proceeded  from  the  atelier  of 
Joachim  Smith,  F.S.A.,  of  Bath,  and  is  a  replica  of  the  bust, 
inscribed  '  J.  Smith  fecit'  'Published  1812,'  at  Stratford,  repro- 
duced to  face  p.  282. 

When,  in  1797,  Walpole  (Lord  Orford)  died,  he  left  his 
country  house  to  Mrs.  Darner,  for  life,  as  a  residence,  with 
£2000  a  year  to  keep  it  up,  and  at  Strawberry  Hill  Mrs. 
Siddons  was  frequently  entertained  by  her,  as,  also,  was 
Patty  Wilkinson,  who,  one  notes,  was  not  only  the  all-weathers 
companion,  required  to  attend  her  padrona  to  the  theatre, 
but,  equally,  the  adopted  daughter,  whose  name  constantly 
appears,  coupled  with  the  senior  lady's,  in  replies  to  formal 
invitations.  No  doubt,  the  similarity  of  their  tastes  chiefly 
made,  and  kept,  Mrs.  Siddons  and  Mrs.  Darner  great  friends. 
It  is  'pretty'  (in  Pepys's  sense)  to  know  that  while  at 
'  Strawberry,'  Mrs.  Siddons  acted  with  her  hostess,  who  was 
a  clever  amateur.  In  1812,  Mrs.  Darner  ceded  the  house  to 
its  real  owner,  Lord  Waldegrave. 

While  there,  she  had  been  the  means  of  Mrs.  Siddons  seeing 
something  of  her  own  attached  friend  and  neighbour,  the  widow 
of  Garrick.  A  few  weeks  before  that  then  all  but  centenarian 
lady  died,  in  1822,  she  made  a  codicil  to  her  will,  to  the  follow- 
ing effect : — 

"  I  give  to  Mrs.  Siddons  a  pair  of  gloves  which  were 
Shakespeare's,  and  were  presented  by  one  of  his  family  to 
my  late  dear  husband,  during  the  jubilee  at  Stratford-upon- 
Avon." 

Miss  Monckton,  afterwards  Countess  of  Cork  and  Orrery, 
was  one  of  the  lion-hunting  type  of  great  folk  who,  early, 
pounced  decisively  on  Mrs.  Siddons.  According  to  Fanny 
Burney,  Miss  Monckton,  at  her  assemblies,  "mixed  the  rank 
and  the  literature,  and  excluded  all  besides."  She  was  a  born 
society  woman,  with  '  an  easy  levity  in  her  air,  manner,  voice, 
and  discourse.'  It  was  that  easy  levity,  I  doubt  not,  which 
bowled  over  Dr.  Johnson,  always  so  ductile  and  pleasant  in 
the  presence  of  high-bred  grace.  The  old  gladiator  loved  to 
take  Miss  Monckton  up  sharp,  and,  in  after  years,  she  used 
to  boast  that  he  had.  She  said,  once,  to  him,  "  Sir,  that  is  a 
very  nice  person."  "  A  nice  person,"  he  replied,  "  what  does 


258  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

that  mean?  Elegant  is  now  the  fashionable  word,  but  will 
go  out,  and  I  see  this  stupid  nice  is  to  succeed  to  it;  what 
does  nice  mean  ?  look  in  my  dictionary,  you  will  see  it  means 
correct,  precise."  Mrs.  Siddons  tells  the  oft-quoted  story x  of 
a  'blue  evening,'  in  1782,  at  Miss  Monckton's,  prefacing  it 
by  the  statement  that  she  had  been  decoyed  to  Charles  Street, 
on  a  promise  of  no  crowd. 

"The  appointed  Sunday  evening  came.  I  went  to  her 
very  nearly  in  undress,  at  the  early  hour  of  eight,  on  account 
of  my  little  boy,  whom  she  desired  me  to  bring  with  me, 
more  for  effect,  I  suspect,  than  for  his  beaux  yeux.  I  found 
with  her,  as  I  had  been  taught  to  expect,  three  or  four  ladies 
of  my  acquaintance;  and  the  time  passed  in  agreeable  con- 
versation, till  I  had  remained  much  longer  than  I  had 
apprehended.  I  was  of  course  preparing  speedily  to  return 
home,  when  incessantly  repeated  thunderings  at  the  door, 
and  the  sudden  influx  of  such  a  throng  of  people  as  I  had 
never  before  seen  collected  in  any  private  house,  counteracted 
every  attempt  that  I  could  make  for  escape.  I  was  there- 
fore obliged,  in  a  state  of  indescribable  mortification,  to  sit 
quietly  down,  till  I  know  not  what  hour  in  the  morning ;  but 
for  hours  before  my  departure,  the  room  I  sat  in  was  so 
painfully  crowded,  that  the  people  absolutely  stood  on  the 
chairs,  round  the  walls,  that  they  might  look  over  their 
neighbours'  heads  to  stare  at  me  .  .  ." 

In  addition  to  friends  named  in  an  earlier  chapter,  frequent 
country-house  hosts  of  Mrs.  Siddons's  were,  says  Campbell, 
Mr.  and  Mrs.  Halsey,  at  Henley  Park ;  the  Elliots,  at  Hurst ; 
the  Marlows,  at  St.  John's  College,  Oxford ;  the  Freres,  at 
Cambridge;  the  Blackshaws,  at  their  seat  in  Berkshire;  and 
Lady  Barrington,  at  Bedsfield,  while — of  persons  unmentioned 
already — he  oftenest  met,  at  her  own  house,  during  the  last 
fifteen  years  of  her  life,  Mr.  H.  Addington,  Lord  and  Lady 
Scarborough,  Dr.  Batty,  '  Conversation  '  Sharp,  Lord  Sidmouth, 
Countess  Clare,  Professor  Smyth,  the  Rev.  Mr.  Milman,  Mr. 
and  Miss  Rogers,  and  Lady  Charlotte  Campbell. 

1  Also  given  by  Fanny  Burney,  and,  in  a  somewhat  fictitious,  or  heightened,  form 
by  Richard  Cumberland,  in  The  Observer,  i.  224-226,  1785,  'Character  of 
Vanessa,'  etc. 


GREAT  MEN  AND  GREAT  LADIES  259 

In  a  series  of  eight  'Sonnets  on  Eminent  Characters,'  by 
young  Coleridge,  that  appeared,  late  in  1794,  in  The  Morning 
Chronicle,  one — in  which  Coleridge  had  Lamb's  assistance — 
was  addressed,  on  December  29th,  to  Mrs.  Siddons.  It  ran  as 
follows : — 

"As  when  a  Child  on  some  long  Winter's  night, 
Affrighted,  clinging  to  its  Grandam's  knees, 
With  eager  wond'ring  and  perturb'd  delight 
Listens  dark  tales  of  fearful  strange  decrees 
Mutter'd  to  Wretch  by  necromantic  spell 
Of  Warlock  Hags,  that,  at  the  'witching  time 
Of  murky  Midnight,  ride  the  air  sublime, 
Or  mingle  foul  embrace  with  Fiends  of  Hell — 
Cold  Horror  drinks  its  blood  !     Anon  the  tear 
More  gentle  starts,  to  hear  the  Beldam  tell 
Of  pretty  Babes,  that  lov'd  each  other  dear — 
Murder'd  by  cruel  Uncle's  mandate  fell : 
E'en  such  the  shiv'ring  joys  thy  tones  impart ; — 
E'en  so  thou,  SIDDONS  !  meltest  my  sad  heart ! " 

With  the  leaders  of  the  new  poetic  movement,  the  new 
romance  literature,  burgeoning  all  around  during  her  prime, 
Mrs.  Siddons  had,  except  with  Scott,  no  dealings.  Probably, 
she  met  Byron  (whose  mother,  when  Miss  Gordon,  had  shrieked 
and  fainted,  in  Edinburgh  Theatre,  at  her  cry  of '  Oh  my  Biron  ! 
my  Biron  ! '  as  Southerne's  Isabella)  and,  if  she  did,  the  occasions 
should  have  been  memorable  to  those  who  never,  elsewhere, 
could  expect  to  see  two  faces  so  godlike  together  in  one  room. 
The  man  for  whom  imaginative  contemporaries  were  uniformly 
enthusiastic  was  himself  enthusiastic  as  to  Mrs.  Siddons's  genius. 
Byron  said  that,  of  actors,  Cooke  was  the  most  natural,  Kemble 
the  most  supernatural,  Kean  the  medium  between  the  two,  but 
that  Mrs.  Siddons  was  worth  them  all  put  together.  In  the 
day  of  Miss  O'Neill,  he  consistently  refused  to  see  her, '  having 
made,  and  kept  a  determination  to  see  nothing  which  should 
disturb  or  divide '  his  '  recollection  of  Siddons.'  These  were  no 
shallow  compliments  for  even  Mrs.  Siddons  to  elicit  from  the 
giant  personality  Byron  remains,  in  spite  of  the  flippancy,  the 
meannesses,  the  lack  of  self-respect. 

Mrs.  Siddons  knew  Byron's  loyal  friend,  Moore,  the  smallest 
gentleman  then  visible  in  society.  Little  in  mind,  but  brilliant 
in  imagination,  and  '  as  good  a  creature '  (in  Miss  Berry's  phrase 


26o  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

for  him)  '  as  ever  lived,'  '  Anacreon '  Moore  sang  his  own  fervent 
songs  (in  the  very  fashionable  drawing-rooms  he  frequented) 
as  if  every  voluptuous  word  were  applicable  to  the  women 
around  him.  Mrs.  Siddons,  for  one,  loved  to  listen,  whenever 
he  sat  down  to  the  piano,  playing,  softly,  an  almost  nominal 
accompaniment,  and  her  quick  sensibility  never  denied  him  his 
ardently  desired  tribute  of  tears.  She  was,  as  might  be  expected, 
responsive  to  all  emotional  music.  James  Beattie  tells  how, 
when  he  played  '  She  rose  and  let  me  in '  to  her  on  his  'cello, 
she  said,  "  Go  on,  and  you  will  soon  have  your  revenge,"  meaning 
he  would  draw  as  many  tears  from  her  as  she  had  drawn  from 
him.  Incledon,  preposterous  braggart  that  he  was,  talked — in  a 
coach — in  181  i,of  her  appreciation  of  his  own  singing,  as  follows: — 
"  Ah !  Sally's  a  fine  creature.  She  has  a  charming  place  on 
the  Edgeware  Road.  I  dined  with  her  last  year,  and  she  paid 
me  one  of  the  finest  compliments  I  ever  received.  I  sang 
*  The  Storm '  after  dinner.  She  cried  and  sobbed  like  a  child. 
Taking  both  of  my  hands,  she  said, '  All  that  I  and  my  brother 
ever  did  is  nothing  compared  with  the  effect  you  produce ! ' " 

Miss  Scott-Gardner  communicates  to  me  an  account  of  her 
mother,  when  a  child  of  seven,  in  1817,  having  been  heard 
singing  to  her  doll,  in  a  married  servant's  garden,  at  Peckham, 
by  a  lady  and  gentleman,  the  former  of  whom  said,  over  the 
gate,  that  she  would  give  her  a  shilling  to  sing  again.  The 
child  replied  she  would  sing  without  the  shilling,  and  did  so. 
The  lady  and  gentleman,  who  were  Mrs.  Siddons  and  Kemble, 
were  so  much  enchanted  with  the  sweetness  and  flexibility  of 
her  voice  that  they  offered  to  bring  her  up  for  the  stage.  This 
was  not  permitted,  but,  instead,  Mrs.  Siddons  taught  her  to 
sing.  Hers  were  the  only  singing  lessons  she  ever  received,  yet 
her  voice  became  so  good  that,  in  later  life,  she  often  went  from 
one  friend's  to  another's,  to  sing  a  song  at  each  house,  and,  in 
1896,  lying  on  her  side,  a  fortnight  before  her  death,  she  sang 
'  Molly  Bawn,'  with  all  its  trills  and  turns,  in  perfect  tune.  Her 
family  always  understood  that '  Mrs.  Siddons  was  not  particularly 
musical,  but  what  she  taught  was  her  own  perfect  elocution  and 
voice  production.' 

A  trait,  contributed  by  Moore,  shows  our  lady  under  another 
aspect.  On  June  2nd,  1819,  he  writes — 

"  Dined   at   Horace    Twiss's,   in    Chancery   Lane :    an   odd 


GREAT  MEN  AND  GREAT  LADIES  261 

dinner,  in  a  borrowed  room,  with  champagne,  pewter  spoons, 
and  old  Lady  Cork.  .  .  .  Went  up  to  coffee,  and  found  Mrs. 
Siddons,  who  was  cold  and  queen-like  to  me.  From  thence, 
about  twelve,  to  an  assembly  at  Mrs.  Phillips's,  where  I  saw 
Mrs.  Siddons  again.  Discovered  the  reason  of  her  coldness  : 
I  had  not  gone  to  a  party  she  had  invited  me  to ;  and,  by  a 
mistake,  she  did  not  hear  of  a  visit  I  had  paid  her  a  day  or  two 
after.  All  right  again  !  " 

From  this  and  various  other  records,  it  is  agreeably  observable 
that,  at  over  sixty,  the  doyenne  of  drama  was  not  above  going 
later  where  others  had  dined. 

Mrs.  Siddons's  name  occurs  in  the  bead-roll  of  celebrities 
who  assisted  at  Rogers's  breakfasts,  those  elect  meals — delight- 
ful enough  to  overcome  the  almost  universal  dislike  to  that 
mode  of  hospitality — where  all  the  pillars  of  literature  were  to 
be  met,  and  none  of  the  caterpillars.  Mrs.  Mair  speaks  of 
opening  a  packet  of  letters  from  Rogers  to  her  grandmother, 
and  being  struck  by  the  frivolity  of  his  interests.  In  only  one 
note  did  he  hint  at  any  higher  taste,  when,  speaking  of  an 
evening  he  was  to  spend  at  her  house,  he  added,  "May  we 
flatter  ourselves  that  we  shall  have  Lear  ?  " 

Scott,  the  English  writer  who,  alone,  shared  with  Byron  in 
something  like  a  European  reputation,  was,  we  have  repeatedly 
seen,  the  friendliest  friend  to  Mrs.  Siddons,  and  her  frequent 
host  at  Ashestiel,  and,  later,  at  Abbotsford.  '  The  glory  of  the 
Border '  had  a  limitless  admiration  for  the  subject  of  this  book, 
and  when,  in  Anne  of  Geierstein^  at  the  supreme  hour  of 
Margaret  of  Anjou's  fate,  at  Aix,  Scott  confessed  that  the 
expression  and  bearing  of  the  exiled  queen  could  only  be 
imagined  by  those  c  who  have  had  the  advantage  of  having  seen 
our  inimitable  Siddons,'  he  paid  her  as  honouring  a  compliment 
as  Reynolds  paid  when  he  inscribed  his  name  on  the  hem  of  her 
garment. 

There  was  much  in  Mrs.  Siddons's  personality  calculated  to 
kindle  peculiar  enthusiasm  inside  the  conical  head  of  Sir  Walter. 
They  were,  in  a  way,  kindred  geniuses.  The  foundation  of 
excellence  in  all  'arts,  good  sense,  was  a  prime  characteristic 
of  the  actress's.  It  was  the  substratum  of  the  man  whe  said 
he  would  " '  rather  be  a  kitten,  and  cry,  Mew ! '  than  write  the 


262  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

best  poetry  in  the  world  on  conditions  of  laying  aside  common 
sense  in  the  ordinary  transactions  and  business  of  the  world." 
Both  Mrs.  Siddons  and  Scott  demonstrated  by  their  lives  that 
a  person — whether  man  or  woman — may  carry  genius  to  its 
height  without  attempting  .to  be  loosed  from  any  sacred  and 
social  bond. 

Whatever  may  be  alleged  as  to  Mrs.  Siddons's  withdrawnness 
and  conversational  stiffness,  the  fact  that  she  was  cherished, 
as  she  was,  by  a  class  of  society  with  whom  high  profes- 
sional capacity  has  rarely,  if  ever,  been  counted  a  justifica- 
tion for  lack  of  urbanity  proves  that  she  cannot  have  lacked  '  les 
manieres  nobles  et  aiseesl  She  may  have  been,  and,  probably, 
was,  ambitious  of  splendid  acquaintance,  but,  if  so,  the  inclina- 
tion was  mutual. 

That,  as  a  consequence  of  her  calling  and  pre-eminence 
therein,  she  expected  social  attention,  and  was  apt  to  sulk,  if,  by 
accident,  it  was  denied  her,  is  clear,  but  that  she  was,  to  any 
abnormal  extent,  greedy  for  admiration,  cannot,  reasonably,  be 
affirmed.  Though  it  is  hard  not  to  fancy  that  she  took 
precedence  somewhere  between  a  royal  and  an  ordinary 
duchess,  we  find  it  stated  that,  in  the  society  of  the  great,  she 
always  pleased  by  *  knowing  her  place/  A  story  which  proves 
that,  even  at  fifty-nine,  she  must  have  possessed,  off  the  stage, 
some  palpable  quantum  of  power  to  captivate  a  susceptible 
imagination  is  told  by  Mrs.  Opie,  who  writes,  on  July  1st,  1814, 
from  1 1  Orchard  Street,  to  her  father— 

"The  baron,  William  de  Humboldt,  was  forced  to  attend 
Lord  Castleragh  in  a  conference  of  nine  hours  yesterday  ; 
therefore  he  wrote  me  an  elegant  note  of  excuse,  for  not  going 
to  see  Mrs.  Siddons  with  me  ...  we  walked  over  to  tell 
Mrs.  Siddons  this,  and  she  was  somewhat  mortified;  but 
recovered  herself  and  was  most  delightful.  We  staid  two 
hours  and  more,  and  we  none  of  us  knew  how  late  it  was.  She 
said  she  had  passed  a  most  happy  two  hours,  and  had  no 
regrets.  M[argaret — a  girl  staying  with  Mrs.  Opie]  came  home 
raving  all  the  way,  saying  she  was  the  most  beautiful,  delightful, 
aud,  I  believe,  even  the  youngest  woman  she  ever  saw;  and  she 
has  put  up  in  paper,  the  bud  of  a  rose  she  gave  her,  to  keep 
for  ever." 


XVIII 

MRS.  SIDDONS'S  RETIREMENT  AND  PUBLIC 
READINGS 

IT  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  Mrs.  Siddons  was  so  much 
more  fortunate  than  other  artists  as  to  escape  the  criticism 
that  imputes  decay  of  power  in  postmeridian  days.  As  early 
as  1799,  when  she  was  only  forty-four,  Mrs.  Trench  (then  Mrs. 
St.  George)  thought  her  creativeness  declining.  "  I  think,"  she 
wrote,  "  Mrs.  Siddons  is  less  various  than  formerly,  and  is  so 
perpetually  in  paroxysms  of  agony  that  she  wears  out  their 
effect.  She  does  not  reserve  her  great  guns  ...  for  critical 
situations,  but  fires  them  off  as  minute  guns,  without  any 
discrimination."  In  the  same  year,  we  find,  in  a  pamphlet 
satire,  My  Own  Pizarro,  the  somewhat  corroborative  line, — 

"And  pond'rous  Siddons  dragg'd  the  tragic  chain," 

though  on  such  a  line,  as  evidence  of  declining  originality,  little 
stress  need  be  laid ;  the  less,  since  one  of  Mrs.  Siddons's 
triumphs  (in  Pizarro  itself)  in  a  new  vein,  occurred  in  this 
very  year. 

There  never,  perhaps,  was  another  great  woman  player,  who, 
after  a  long  reign,  contemplated,  and  effected,  abdication  on  so 
few  suggestions  from  press  or  public.  A  letter l  from  Lawrence 
to  Farington  makes  it  clear  that  Lawrence  believed  the  season 
(1809-10)  of  the  O.P.  riots  to  have  been  previously  decided  on 
as  her  last.  Six  seasons  earlier,  when,  in  1803,  Kemble  had 
moved  house  from  Drury  Lane  to  Covent  Garden,  Boaden  says 
that  Mrs.  Siddons,  after  a  '  struggle  of  thirty  years/  might  well 
have  thought  of  retirement,  had  not  devotion  to  her  brother 
induced  her  to  give  him  her  still  important  support  in  his 

1  Sir  Thomas  Lawrences  Letter-Bag)  64, 
263 


264  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

venture.     In  proof,  her  first  biographer  quotes,  as  follows,  from 
a  letter,  written  by  her,  in  August,  1803  : — 

"...  Content  is  all  I  wish.  But  I  must  again  enter  into 
the  bustle  of  the  world.  For  though  fame  and  fortune  have 
given  me  all  I  wish,  while  my  perseverance  and  exertions  may 
be  useful  to  clners,  I  do  not  think  myself  at  liberty  to  give 
myself  up  to  my  own  selfish  gratifications  .  .  .  nothing  but  my 
brother  could  have  induced  me  to  appear  again  in  public  [her 
daughter,  Sally,  had  died  in  the  preceding  March]  but  his 
interest  and  honour  must  always  be  most  dear  to  me." 

Not  till  1810,  when  Mrs.  Siddons  is  fifty-five,  does  any 
remark  come  from  sworn  admirers  as  to  lessening  ability  for 
her  profession.  On  March  i8th  of  that  year,  Scott  writes  to 
Joanna  Baillie,  from  Edinburgh,  "  Siddons'  .  .  .  mother  is  here 
just  now.  I  was  quite  shocked  to  see  her,  for  the  two  last  years 
have  made  a  dreadful  inroad  both  on  voice  and  person ;  she  has, 
however,  a  very  bad  cold."  Less  than  a  year  before,  the  voice, 
here,  perhaps,  only  temporarily  behind  a  cloud,  had  been 
enthusiastically  described  by  Lamb's  friend,  Robert  Lloyd,  in  a 
letter,  from  London,  to  his  wife,  in  Birmingham,  as  filling  *  the 
immense  expanse'  of  the  Opera  House,1  where  the  burnt-out 
Covent  Garden  company  was  then  playing.  Another  two 
years  after  1810,  and  Crabb  Robinson  reported  on  Mrs.  Siddons 
as  Mrs.  Beverley,  "  Her  voice  appeared  to  have  lost  its  brilliancy 
(like  a  beautiful  face  through  a  veil) ;  in  other  respects,  however, 
her  acting  is  as  good  as  ever." 

This  last  is  the  main  point,  and,  here,  most  trustworthy 
observers  were  at  one.  In  all  that  truly  constitutes  the 
great  actress,  Mrs.  Siddons  could  never  become  antiquated. 
Washington  Irving  saw  her  in  1805,  and  said — 

"  I  hardly  breathe  while  she  is  on  the  stage.  She  works  up 
my  feelings  till  I  am  like  a  mere  child.  And  yet  this  woman  is 
old,  and  has  lost  all  elegance  of  figure.  Think,  then,  what  must 
be  her  powers,  that  she  can  delight  and  astonish  even  in  the 
characters  of  Calista  and  Belvidera  !  " 

Irving  was  a  stranger  and  newcomer,  but,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
Belvidera  was  one  of  the  parts  Mrs.  Siddons  was  less  capable 
of  than  formerly,  on  account  of  the  physical  exertion  it  exacted. 

1  Charles  Lamb  and  the  Lloyds,  edited  by  E.  V.  Lucas,  160,  1898. 


RETIREMENT  AND  PUBLIC  READINGS          265 

With  years,  her  portly  person  had  become  so  corpulent,  and — 
though,  in  this,  ahead  of  her  years — so  infirm,  that,  during  her 
last  season,  when,  as  Isabella,  in  Measure  for  Measure,  she  knelt 
to  the  Duke,  she  could  not  get  up  without  help,  to  mask  the 
necessity  for  which,  Mrs.  Powell,  who  played  Mariana,  was, 
Genest  tells  us,  also  assisted  in  rising.  Mrs.  Siddons's  increasing 
bodily  bulk  had  a  great  deal  to  do  with  a  retirement  that  must 
have  surprised  those,  who,  to  be  consistent,  should  have  expected 
her  to  continue  to  appear  for  the  several  further  seasons  during 
which  she  might  reasonably  have  hoped  to  make  money. 

On  Sunday,  June  I4th,  1812,  Miss  Berry — we  learn  from  her 
'Journal* — was  at  an  evening  gathering  chez  Miss  Johnstone 
(afterwards  Duchess  of  Cannizzaro)  at  which  Mrs.  Siddons 
repeated  to  her,  in  a  corner,  alone,  the  verses  she  was  intending 
to  recite  at  her  Farewell,  the  date  of  which  had  been  announced 
a  fortnight  earlier.  "  They  are  by  her  nephew  Twiss,"  added 
Miss  Berry,  "  and  I  thought  them  in  good  taste."  Many  weeks 
before  this,  the  verses  had  been  written,  proffered,  and  weighed, 
as  is  shown  by  the  following  letter  from  Mrs.  Siddons,  which 
their  author's  grandson,  Mr.  Horace  Twiss,  allows  me  to  print : — 

"  WESTBOURNE  FARM, 
March  y.stt  1812 

"  MY  DEAR  HORACE, — In  the  Address  you  have  sent  me,  you 
have  entered  into  my  feelings  of  fitness  and  propriety  completely 
you  have  overcome  all  the  difficulties  which  opposed  you  in  the 
construction  of  it,  with  much  and  very  graceful  adroitness ;  in 
short,  to  my  entire  Satisfaction.  Nevertheless,  as  this  will  be  a 
composition  much  commented  on,  receive  with  my  sincere 
thanks,  my  earnest  entreaty  that  you  will  consult  those  who  are 
nicer  and  less  partial  critics.  Your  honour  being  the  only 
Solicitude,  I  feel  upon  the  subject. — Ever,  My  dear  Horace, 
Your  affte.  Aunt  S.  SIDDONS." 

Mrs.  Siddons's  eleven  '  last  performances '  (June  8th — 29th) 
formed  an  epitome  of  her  creative  work.  During  1811-12,  she 
had  acted  in  all,  fifty-seven  times,  and  in  fourteen  characters. 
Her  last  representations  seemed  to  the  audiences  a  withdrawal 
of  the  characters  themselves,  each  by  each,  from  personification. 

Throughout  the  final  season,  there  was  a  notice  in  the 
Covent  Garden  playbills,  "  N.B.  No  orders  can  be  admitted 


266  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

on  the  nights  of  Mrs.  Siddons's  performance."  More  flattery, 
more  social  attention,  and,  consequently,  more  worldly  happiness 
Mrs.  Siddons  had  never  tasted  than  during  these  culminating 
months  and  weeks,  and  her  spirits  might  have  been  kept  in  a 
simmer  of  delicious  delirium,  had  it  not  been  for  the  sombre 
thought  of  the  meaning  of  retirement.  To  Mrs.  Piozzi,  with 
whom  she  always  went  below  the  surface,  she  confided  that  she 
felt  *  as  if  she  were  mounting  the  first  step  of  a  ladder  conduct- 
ing her  to  the  other  world.'  It  is  harder  to  retire  from  the 
stage  than  from  any  other  profession.  In  the  case  of  players, 
no  picture,  poem,  statue,  or  symphony  is  to  survive  as  demon- 
strably  their  work. 

"  Feeble  tradition  is  their  memory's  guard." 

On  Mrs.  Siddons's  Farewell  Night  (which  was  also  our  own 
Benefit),  each  box  ticket l  bore  a  red  seal,  with  the  word  'Farewell.3 

The  great  genius  of  Tragedy  rightly  crowned  her  life's  work 
by  selecting  the  tremendous  wife  of  Macbeth  as  the  character 
in  which  to  make  her  ultimate  impression.  In  Lady  Macbeth, 
her  art  had  reached  its  acme.  To  an  almost  miraculous  extent, 
she  infused  into  the  earlier  scenes  an  atmosphere  of  mystery, 
vastness ;  a  sense  of  fate,  or  retribution,  hanging  over  all, 
waiting  its  time.  As  for  her  acting  in  the  supreme  scenes,  after 
the  murder  of  Duncan,  that  was,  exclaimed  Hazlitt — apt,  always, 
to  be  dithyrambic  concerning  Mrs.  Siddons — "  something  above 
nature.  Power  was  seated  on  her  brow,  passion  emanated  from 
her  breast  as  from  a  shrine." 

On  this  29th  of  June,  1812,  after  what  Leigh  Hunt  termed 
'  the  bewildered  melancholy '  of  Mrs.  Siddons's  sleep-walking 
— an  overwhelming  majority  of  the  audience  insisted  on  the 
curtain  falling  on  this,  as  the  concluding  incident  of  the  play, 
though  a  minority,  Genest  states,  complained  later,  that,  by 
such  summary  procedure,  the  play  had  been  truncated,  and 
they  themselves  docked  of  their  money's  worth.  When  the 
scene  closed,  Mrs.  Siddons  was  divested  of  Lady  Macbeth's 
apparel,  and  then,  after  an  expectant  twenty  minutes'  interval, 
the  curtain  went  up,  to  discover  her,  in  white,  seated  at  a  table. 

1  One  of  these — "Mrs.  Siddons's  Benefit,  No.  176  Box" — is  preserved  in  the 
Shakespeare  Memorial  Gallery,  Stratford-upon-Avon. 


RETIREMENT  AND  PUBLIC  READINGS          267 

She  rose,  and  came  forward,  but,  for  some  minutes,  was  prevented 
from  utterance  by  the  audience's  acclamations.  At  last,  she 
was  able  to  speak  Horace  Twiss's  Address.  Thus  runs  its 
final  verse : — 

"Judges  and  Friends  !  to  whom  the  magic  strain 
Of  Nature's  feeling  never  spoke  in  vain, 
Perhaps  your  hearts,  when  years  have  glided  by, 
And  past  emotions  wake  a  fleeting  sigh, 
May  think  on  her  whose  lips  have  pour'd  so  long 
The  charmed  sorrows  of  your  Shakespeare's  song : — 
On  her,  who,  parting  to  return  no  more, 
Is  now  the  mourner  she  but  seem'd  before, 
Herself  subdued,  resigns  the  melting  spell, 
And  breathes,  with  swelling  heart,  her  long,  her  last  Farewell ! " 

As  she  delivered  these  personal  lines,  to  her  so  poignant, 
the  woman's  anguish  of  departure  overflowed  the'  actress's. 
Kemble — her  Macbeth  in  the  play  just  over — led  her,  weeping, 
away.  The  elan  de  coeur  lifted,  in  one  wave,  the  public  and  its 
friend  of  thirty  years,  who  had  played  with  Garrick  and  with 
Macready,  and  detonating  cheers,  expressing  the  whole-hearted 
admiration  of  the  house,  from  the  peers  to  the  porters,  followed 
her  off  the  stage.  All  lamented  that,  while  still  in  possession 
of  so  much  visible  energy,  she,  '  the  stateliest  ornament  of  the 
public  mind,'  should  have  felt  herself  summoned  to  part  from 
them.  In  their  estimation,  she  took  with  her  not  only  her 
superlative  reputation  as  an  artist,  but  the  lustre  of  a  lifetime's 
rectitude.  "  I  never  can  help  carryin  ontil  the  stage  my  know- 
lege  o'  an  actor's  preevat  character,"  says  the  Shepherd  of 
Noctes  Ambrosiana,  and  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the 
cognizance  of  Mrs.  Siddons's  honest  life  had,  throughout  her 
career,  added,  for  the  onlooker,  a  deeper  charm  to  her  em- 
bodiment of  such  parts  as  Desdemona  and  Imogen.  A 
thousand  claims  to  reverence  closed  in  her  as  mother,  wife,  and 
Queen  of  drama.  Exit  Mrs.  Siddons. 

There  is  no  evidence  to  prove  that  this  great  player  was, 
for  an  artist  and  an  actress,  to  any  abnormal  extent  avid  of 
praise.  "  The  applause  that  is  the  palm  of  Art  is  necessarily 
sweet  to  my  sense,"  she  wrote,  in  1793,  to  John  Taylor,  and 
so  much  was  reasonable.  I  confess  I  am  sufficiently  in  love 
with  my  subject  to  believe  her  to  have  been  guiltless,  in  a  high 


268  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

and  rare  degree,  of  the  pettier  human  depravities.  Hazlitt 
spoke  of  an  'elevation  and  magnitude  of  thought'  of  which 
her  noble  form  seemed  the  natural  mould  and  receptacle,  and 
one  is  convinced  that  she  who  knew  the  heart  of  human  nature, 

*  Our  sad  moods,  and  the  still  eve's  crimson  glow ' 

was  not  devoured  by  a  petrifying  and  murderous  vanity. 

Professional  jealousy  is  an  inevitable  element  in  the  player's 
lot,  and  not  even  a  Siddons,  supremely  though  she  towered 
above  contemporaries,  was  so  faultless  as  never  to  feel  anxiety 
concerning  the  maintenance  of  her  pre-eminence.  She  had 
an  extraordinary — and  well-founded — belief  in  herself,  and 
scant  humour.  When  people  impugned  her,  she  spoke  of  the 
"  malignant  treachery "  her  "  enemies  could  devise,"  and  attri- 
buted their  attacks  to  "  hell-born  malice."  "  My  victorious 
faith,"  she  went  on,  "  upholds  me." 

Her  literalness  was,  in  all  probability,  the  real  reason  why, 
in  her  own  day,  she  was  by  some  persons  considered  ultra-vain. 
To  meet  flattery,  she  had  no  disclaiming  phrases.  Aware  of 
her  genius,  she  referred  to  it,  as  a  philosopher  might  have  done, 

impartially — as  a  natural  phenomenon.  '  Sir  [ ] '  told  Lady 

Charlotte  Campbell  he  was  present  when,  a  lady  having  taken 
her  little  girl  to  her  house  that,  in  after  years,  she  might  boast 
she  had  seen  Mrs.  Siddons,  the  latter  took  the  child's  hand, 
and,  in  a  slow  and  solemn  tone,  said  :  "  Ah,  my  dear,  you  may 
well  look  at  me,  for  you  will  never  see  my  like  again." 

It  has  been  assumed,  from  a  remark  she  made  to  Rogers, 
that  Mrs.  Siddons  felt  'an  envy  to'  her  brother  because  his 
taking  leave  of  the  stage  eclipsed  hers.  This  was  a  momentary 
weakness.  If  she  had  an  absurdity  of  disposition,  it  was  family 
self-satisfaction,  exaggerated  pride  in  the  Kemble  gens.  In 
relation  to  John,  she  spoke  of  herself  as  '  one  whose  affection 
is  unlimited,  and  to  whom  he  is  as  dear  as  brother  can  be  to 
a  sister.'  After  the  Covent  Garden  fire,  she  thus  eulogized 
him,  to  Mrs.  Fitzhugh,  in  a  letter  in  the  Alfred  Morrison 
Collection : — 

"...  you  would  participate  the  joy  I  feel  in  beholding  this 
ador'd  brother  stemming  the  torrent  of  adversity  with  a  manly 
fortitude,  serenity,  and  even  hope,  that  almost  bursts  my  heart 


RETIREMENT  AND  PUBLIC  READINGS          269 

with  an  admiration  too  big  to  bear,  and  blinds  me  with  the 
most  delicious  tears.  .  .  .  Oh  !  he  is  a  glorious  creature  ;  did 
not  I  always  tell  you  so  ?  Yes,  yes  ;  and  all  will  go  well  with 
him  again.  He  bears  it  like  an  angel  too." 

Seven  months  after  Mrs.  Siddons's  official  retirement,  she 
gave  a  Reading,  in  aid  of  the  widow  and  orphans  of  Andrew 
Cherry,  the  dramatist  and  actor,  and  this  resuscitation  of 
function  preluded  many  further  Readings  of  which  old 
newspapers  garner  the  announcements.  Kemble  told  Boaden 
his  sister's  means  were  insufficient  to  maintain  her  in  complete 
comfort  without  some  additional  money-making,  but  no  doubt, 
her  major  inducement  was  the  passion  for  interesting  an 
audience.  Acting  was  the  love  of  her  life. 

The  apparatus  at  the  Readings  was  simple.  Mrs.  Siddons 
stood,  and,  on  other  occasions,  sat  to  read,  in  front  of  a  large 
red  screen.  Behind  it,  a  light  was  placed,  with  the  result  that 
"  as  the  head  moved,  a  bright  circular  irradiation  "  enhaloed  its 
outline.  On  a  lecturn  before  her,  was  placed  a  copy  of  the 
play.  A  gentleman,  frequently  her  nephew,  Twiss,  formally 
handed  her  to  and  from  her  place. 

Her  utterance  was  as  much  recitation  as  reading,  if  we 
may  judge  from  Campbell's  statement,  "  When  her  memory 
could  not  be  entirely  trusted  she  assisted  her  sight  by 
spectacles,  which,  in  the  intervals,  she  handled  and  waved  so 
gracefully,  that  you  could  not  have  wished  her  to  have  been 
without  them."  She  was  dressed,  says  the  same  reporter,  in 
white,  with  her  hair  a  la  grecque.  At  a  later  date,  Fanny 
Kemble  speaks  of  her  wearing  '  a  mob-cap.'  On  the  platform, 
Boaden  says  she  exactly  recalled  Lawrence's  full-length  of  her 
(there,  robed  in  velvet)  reading  Milton.  With  the  shackles  of 
sixty  upon  her,  she  yet  had  no  wrinkles.  In  1814,  Crabb 
Robinson  wrote  of  her  still  fascinating  smile.  I  was  recently 
shown  a  lock  of  her  hair,  strong  and  grey  —  presumably,  the 
shade  it  was,  at  this  period,  attaining.  Never  would  she  lose 
that  roundness  and  graciousness  of  gesture,  and  that  ready, 
descriptive  aid  of  the  wonderful  hand,  which,  in  the  largest 
gathering,  distinguish  a  once  great  actress  from  other 
women. 

Fanny  Kemble  says  Mrs.  Siddons's  readings  of  Macbeth 
and  King  John  were  the  raandest  dramatic  achievement 


270  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

imaginable  with  the  least  possible  admixture  of  the  theatrical 
element.  Mr.  J.  H.  Leigh  has  lent  me  a  calf-bound  copy  of 
Othello  (bought  for  Mrs.  Siddons,  by  Mrs.  Fitzhugh,  for  'its 
good  large  type')  which  Mrs.  Siddons  used,  and,  previously, 
*  cut '  and  pencilled,  for  her  Readings.  On  the  blank  page, 
opposite  '  Dramatis  Persona}  in  large  writing,  to  be  easily  read, 
the  following  is  written,  in  Mrs.  Siddons's  hand  : — 

"The  Play  which  I  am  to  have  the  honor  of  reading  to 
you  this  evening  Ladies  and  Gentlemen  is  the  Tragedy  of 
Othello.  It  will  be  considerably  shortened,  by  the  omission 
of  several  exceptionable  passages,  and  I  shall  rely  on  your 
often-experienced  indulgence  to  excuse  any  defects  which 
your  Taste  and  Judgment  may  discern  either  in  the  arrange- 
ment or  the  execution  of  so  arduous  an  attempt.  The 
Characters  of  this  Tragedy  are  .  .  ." 

Boaden  states  that  Mrs.  Siddons  did  not  attempt  mimicry 
of  men  in  the  men's  parts.  It  is  noticeable,  in  the  play 
before  me,  that  every  emphatic  word  is  underlined,  as  showing 
the  tendency  to  overaccentuate  which  she  and  her  brothers 
carried  so  far  that,  with  John,  valueless  words  were  accentuated. 
Speaking  of  the  too  elaborate  emphasis  given,  in  modern 
declamation,  to  insignificant  words,  "  That  was  brought  in  by 
them,"  said  cute  old  Mrs.  Abington  to  Crabb  Robinson, 
respecting  the  Kembles. 

Owing  to  the  kindness  of  Mrs.  Fleeming  Jenkin,  I  am  able 
to  quote  from  the  immediate  notes  made  by  Professor  G. 
J.  Bell  on  Mrs.  Siddons's  reading  of  Shakespeare.  He 
remarked : — 

"  Reynolds's  picture  of  Mrs.  Siddons  as  the  tragic  muse 
gives  a  perfect  conception  of  the  general  effect  of  her  look  and 
figure.  .  .  .  She  sat  on  a  chair  raised  on  a  small  platform,  and 
the  look  and  posture  which  always  presents  itself  to  me  is 
that  with  which  she  contemplates  the  figure  of  Hamlet's  ghost. 
Her  eye  elevated,  her  head  a  little  drawn  back  and  inclined 
upwards,  her  fine  countenance  filled  with  reverential  awe  and 
horror,  and  the  chilling  whisper  scarcely  audible  but  horrific. 
She  gave  .  .  .  more  fully  the  idea  of  a  ghost's  presence  than 
any  spectral  illusion  on  the  stage." 

Mrs.    Piozzi    shrewdly   said   that,  to   her,  personally,  Mrs. 


RETIREMENT  AND  PUBLIC  READINGS          271 

Siddons's  power  of  amusing  five  hundred  persons,  without  help 
from  fellow-actors,  stage,  or  scenery,  was  a  stronger  proof  than 
anything  in  her  previous  career  of  the  mighty  actor  she  was. 
It  is  interesting  to  find,  in  the  Mrs.  Siddons  of  sixty,  that  great 
sign  of  a  first-class  mind — its  intellectual  account  is  never 
closed.  She  was  as  able  as  ever  to  adopt  a  fresh  or  correcting 
suggestion.  Greatheed  told  Miss  Wynn  that  after  the  publica- 
tion of  Guy  Mannering,  in  1815,  he  was  struck  by  her  new  way 
of  reading  the  Macbeth  witches'  scene.  Meg  Merrilies  had 
explained  to  her  Shakespeare's  idea  in  the  witches.  Miss  Wynn 
added : — 

"  I  can  hardly  conceive  anything  finer  than  the  expression 
which  Mrs.  Siddons  gave  to  the  simple  reply,  *  A  deed  without  a 
name'  It  seemed  full  of  all  the  guilty  dread  belonging  to 
witchcraft ;  and  it  is  just  this  idea  of  guilt  which  seems  to  me 
so  difficult  to  convey  to  our  minds,  which  are  so  engrossed  with 
the  folly  of  the  whole  thing  that  we  do  not  recollect  it  was 
a  sin." 

From  the  Heads  of  Colleges  in  both  Universities  Mrs. 
Siddons  received,  in  1814,  invitations  to  read  to  their  elite — a 
compliment  never  paid  to  Garrick.  She  went,  both  to  Oxford 
and  Cambridge,  to  give  these  honorary  readings,  accompanied 
by  Cecilia,  who  told  Patty  Wilkinson,  in  a  subsequent  letter, 
what  gratifying  attentions  had  been  shown,  at  Cambridge,  to 
'  our  Darling,'  her  mother.  The  Trial  Scene,  in  The  Merchant 
of  Venice,  was  a  selection  chosen. 

Mrs.  Siddons  did  not,  in  her  readings,  confine  herself  to 
Shakespeare  and  Milton.  In  1813,  in  a  letter  to  Mrs.  Fitzhugh, 
she  speaks  of  having  just  read,  to  the  Royal  Party,  at  Windsor, 
Gray's  ' Elegy'  and  Marmion.  She  read  in  many  places — in 
London,  in  Mrs.  Weddell's  well-frequented  drawing-room  ;  in 
Dublin  (in  1803),  at  the  Lying-in  Hospital  rooms ;  at  Broadstairs, 
at  Mrs.  Forsyth's,  for  the  benefit  of  the  Margate  Sea-bathing 
Infirmary.  Half-a-guinea  was  well  spent  for  the  privilege  of 
listening  to  her  potent  eloquence.  In  a  letter  to  Whalley,  of 
November  I7th,  1813,  Mrs.  Piozzi  'half  wished'  that  'Louis 
Dixhuit,'  then  in  Bath,  '  had  heard  Mrs.  Siddons  read  Macbeth ' 
at  Whalley's  house  in  Queen's  Square. 

By  her  lifelong  enthusiasm  for  Milton,  Mrs.  Siddons  fulfilled 


272  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

Wordsworth's  aspiration  of  linking  the  end  of  existence  with 
its  commencement.  Once,  the  moment  she  had  finished  reading 
the  Fourth  Book  of  Paradise  Lost,  Sir  William  Pepys,  who  was 
in  the  select  audience  gathered  to  hear  her,  spoke,  offhand,  the 
following  impromptu — 

"When  Siddons  reads  from  Milton's  page, 
Then  sound  and  sense  unite ; 
Her  varying  tones  our  hearts  engage, 
With  exquisite  delight : 
So  well  these  varying  tones  accord 
With  his  seraphic  strain, 
We  hear,  we  feel,  in  ev'ry  word 
His  Angels  speak  again." 

Sir  George  Smart,  the  musician,  had  a  story  of  his  meeting 
Mrs.  Siddons  at  the  Countess  of  Charleville's,  when  she  told 
him  how  difficult  she  had  found  it  to  read  Paradise  Lost 
properly,  though  she  had  been  trying,  all  her  life,  to  do  so. 
"  Indeed,"  she  added,  "  I  never  go  without  the  book  in  my 
pocket."  Sir  George,  taking  this  for  '  a  bounce,'  asked  :  "  Have 
you  it  now  ?  "  and  was  rebuked  by  her  producing — after  slowly 
searching  in  her  large  pocket — a  small  edition  of  the  divine 
poem.  Perhaps,  she  instituted  her  habit  of  carrying  a  pocket 
Milton,  after  the  date  when,  reading  the  work  at  the  lodgings 
of  the  Rector  of  Exeter  College,  no  Milton,  and,  equally,  no 
Shakespeare,  was  forthcoming  in  the  whole  of  Dr.  Thomas 
Stinton's  library. 

Her  dealing  with  Paradise  Lost  did  not  only  consist  in 
reading  from  it.  In  1822,  John  Murray  published  a  'Selection,' 
sometimes  entitled  An  Abridgement  of  Paradise  Lost,  by  Mrs. 
Siddons  ;  and,  on  the  title-page  of  other  copies,  The  Story  of 
our  First  Parents,  Selected  from  Milton's  Paradise  Lost :  For  the 
Use  of  Young  Persons.  By  Mrs.  Siddons. 

A  committee  was  formed  for  the  purpose  of  persuading 
Mrs.  Siddons  to  return  to  the  stage ;  but  she  had,  says  Genest, 
the  good  sense  to  refuse.  He  gives  the  list  of  her  (nineteen) 
stage  appearances  after  her  retirement.  She  was,  of  course, 
frequently  importuned  to  act  for  this  person  or  that  charity. 
That  she  appeared  on  the  stage  too  late  in  life,  when  she  had 
become  unwieldy  and  masculine-looking,  is  a  lamentable  fact. 


RETIREMENT  AND  PUBLIC  READINGS          273 

Macready,  who  saw  her  1817  Lady  Macbeth,  went  so  far  as 
to  affirm  that  there  was  '  no  flash,  no  sign  of  her  pristine,  all- 
subduing  genius.'  In  the  sleep-walking  scene,  Miss  Wynn, 
even  as  early  as  1813,  missed  *  the  fine,  fixed,  glassy  stare'  of 
yore.  She  did  not  know  whether  '  the  diminution  of  the  natural 
fire  of  the  eye'  was  the  cause,  or  whether  'the  muscles  were 
grown  less  flexible,'  but  of  the  fact  she  felt  certain.  In  an  1816 
'  Examiner,'  Hazlitt  was  caustic  as  to  Mrs.  Siddons's  reappear- 
ance in  reponse  to  Princess  Charlotte's  wish  that  she  and  Prince 
Leopold  could  see  her  play.  "  She  always  spoke  as  slow  as  she 
ought:  she  now  speaks  slower  than  she  did,"  he  remarked. 
And,  after  all,  her  exertion  can  scarcely  have  interested  Prince 
Leopold,  for  he  never  looked  up  from  the  book  with  which  he 
followed  the  play,  though  Her  Royal  Highness  kept  jogging  his 
elbow,  and  tapping  him  with  her  fan. 

Mrs.  Siddons's  nearest  friends  bewailed  her  reappearances. 
Scott,  in  1812,  had  wished  a  'long  twilight'  might  be  averted. 
Mrs.  Piozzi  wrote,  from  Bath,  on  December  I3th,  1815,  to 
Whalley,  in  Brussels,  "...  are  you  not  sorry  our  dear  Mrs. 
Siddons  had  to  act  again  for  her  son's  distressed  family?  It 
is  really  a  great  pity,  and  when  a  young  successor  has  posses- 
sion of  the  public  favour! — that  fine  Miss  O'Neill.  Oh,  how 
the  news  did  vex  me ! "  Two  years  later,  George  Siddons 
wrote,  from  Sumatra,  to  Horace  Twiss — in  a  letter  placed  at 
my  disposal  by  the  present  Mr.  Horace  Twiss — "  I  am  quite 
vexed  to  see  that  my  Mother  continues  to  perform  occasionally, 
and  heartily  wish  that  those  who  value  her  health — shall  I 
say  her  character — would  prevail  on  her  to  give  it  up  entirely 
and  for  ever." 

Yet,  still,  play-goers  retained  a  venerating  enthusiasm  for  the 
dowager-queen,  and  when,  the  last  time  she  ever  acted,  the 
moment  her  young  Norval  had  pronounced  the  line, 

'As  thou  excellest  all  of  womankind,' 

the  house  gave  three  rounds  of  applause,  not  to  Lady 
Randolph,  but  to  Mrs.  Siddons  in  proprid  persond.  Fanny 
Kemble  describes  how,  early  in  the  afternoon  of  this  same 
day  (June  9th,  1819),  her  father  took  her  into  Covent  Garden 
to  see  the  dense  crowd  waiting  for  the  doors  to  open,  and 
18 


274  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

how,  a  few  hours  later,  inside  the  theatre,  she  heard  '  the 
tremendous  roar  of  public  greeting  that  welcomed '  the  entrance 
of  '  a  solemn  female  figure  in  black ' — her  aunt. 

That  Mrs.  Siddons,  after  1812,  should  have  painfully 
missed  the  perpetual  excitement  of  public  exhibition,  who 
can  wonder?  For  everything,  including  one's  past,  one  pays. 
After  her  retirement — she  called  her  otium  cum  dignitate,  '  her 
alter'd  life,' — she  but  rarely  attended,  as  a  visitor,  the  spot 

'  Where  the  spirit  its  highest  life  had  led.' 

The  fire  of  temperament  does  not  die  out,  even  after  the 
period  of  the  yellow  leaf  has  set  in.  When,  in  these  flat 
and  mediocre  years,  Rogers  was  'sitting  with  her  of  an 
afternoon,'  Mrs.  Siddons  would  say  to  him,  "  Oh,  dear !  this 
is  the  time  I  used  to  be  thinking  of  going  to  the  theatre; 
first  came  the  pleasure  of  dressing  for  my  part,  and  then  the 
pleasure  of  acting  it;  but  that  is  all  over  now."  She  could 
have  sympathised  with  Bliicher,  who  said,  to  Miss  Croft,  in 
Lawrence's  studio,  "  C'est  seulement  le  repos  qui  me  fatigue" 
Under  date,  June  6th,  1828,  Tom  Moore's  Diary  contains 
the  following  entry : — 

"Dined  at  Rogers's.  .  .  .  An  addition  to  our  party  in  the 
evening,  among  whom  was  Mrs.  Siddons;  had  a  good  deal 
of  conversation  with  her,  and  was,  for  the  first  time  in  my 
life,  interested  by  her  off  the  stage.  .  .  .  Among  other  reasons 
for  her  regret  at  leaving  the  stage  was,  that  she  always  found 
in  it  a  vent  for  her  private  sorrows,  which  enabled  her  to  bear 
them  better ;  and  often  she  has  got  credit  for  the  truth  and 
feeling  of  her  acting  when  she  was  doing  nothing  more  than 
relieving  her  own  heart  of  its  grief.  This,  I  have  no  doubt, 
is  true,  and  there  is  something  particularly  touching  in  it." 

This  was,  as  we  have  seen,  Mrs.  Siddons's  lifelong  senti- 
ment. She  had  always  disburdened  into  her  parts  some  of 
the  heaviness  of  her  personal  cares.  A  sad  letter,  of  1815, 
written  by  her  to  Mrs.  Fitzhugh — the  letter  of  an  artist  shorn 
of  the  practice  of  her  art — told  much  the  same  tale.  She 
wrote — 

"  I  don't  know  why,  unless  that  I  am  older  and  feebler, 
or  that  I  am  now  without  a  profession,  which  forced  me  out 


RETIREMENT  AND  PUBLIC  READINGS  275 

of  myself  in  my  former  afflictions,  but  the  loss  of  my  poor 
dear  Harry  seems  to  have  laid  a  heavier  hand  upon  my 
mind  than  any  I  have  sustained.  I  drive  out  to  recover  my 
voice  and  my  spirits,  and  am  better  while  abroad ;  but  I 
come  home  and  lose  them  both  in  an  hour.  I  cannot  read 
or  do  anything  else  but  puddle  with  my  clay.  I  have  began 
a  full-length  figure  of  Cecilia;  and  this  is  a  resource  which 
fortunately  never  fails  me.  ...  I  have  little  to  complain  of, 
except  a  low  voice  and  lower  spirits." 


XIX 
LAST   YEARS   AND   SURROUNDINGS 

MRS.  SIDDONS,  as  has  been  seen,  continued  to  reside 
at  Westbourne  Farm  for  five  years  after  retirement, 
growing  her  favourite  pansies  in  the  garden  borders, 
and   taking   walks   with  Patty  Wilkinson   on  what  Campbell 
denominates  '  the  shores '  of  the  comparatively  recently  opened 
Paddington  Canal.     There,  he  describes  how,  one  day,  he  met 
them,   when   himself   dewy-faced   from    exercise,   carrying   his 
great-coat,   and   in   no   fettle    for    unexpectedly   encountering 
'  the  Queen,'  though  on  his  way,  all  the  same,  to  call  on  her. 

Although  Westbourne  Farm  contained,  said  Mrs.  Siddons, 
more  accommodation  than  its  appearance  indicated,  27  Upper 
Baker  Street,  the  lease  of  which  she  took,  in  1817,  must  have 
been  more  commodious,  especially  after  her  addition  to  it  of 
the  indispensable  studio.  The  drawing-room,  with  its  tall  sash 
windows,  and  railed  parapet,  giving  on  the  'small  green,'  or 
garden,  was  of  handsome  dimensions.  No.  27  was  the  first 
house  on  the  east  side,  and,  thanks  to  the  Prince  Regent's 
intervention,  its  end  windows,  looking  north,  were  permitted 
an  unobstructed  'country  view,'  into  the  Regent's  Park,  to 
obtain  which  privilege  for  the  honoured  actress,  Nash  had  to 
abbreviate  Cornwall  Terrace,  then  being  built. 

We  know  little  of  how  Mrs.  Siddons's  successive  homes 
were  furnished.  The  early  nineteenth  century  was  an  age  of 
pier-glasses  and  l pendulesl  of  glazed  lemon-coloured  curtains 
with  dark  chintz  borders,  and  of  whatever  else  Carlton  House 
taste  judged  genteel.  It  surprises  one  to  read  that  the  Baker 
Street  house  was  so  out-of-date,  or  so  individual,  as  to  be 
wainscoted  with  dark  oak.  In  Changing  London.  Marylebone 

(1906),  Mr.  J.  Geo.  Head,  F.S.I.,  states  that  the  drawing-room 

276 


LAST  YEARS  AND  SURROUNDINGS  277 

had  a  curious  fireplace  with  imposing  terra-cotta  columns  on 
each  side,  masking  chimney  flues.  Writing  six  years  earlier, 
Mr.  George  Clinch,  in  his  Marylebone  and  St.  Pancras,  was 
able  to  state,  from  personal  observation,  "  On  the  staircase  is 
a  small  side  window  of  painted  glass,  containing  medallion 
portraits  of  Shakspere,  Milton,  Spenser,  Cowley,  and  Dryden. 
This  is  chiefly  interesting  from  the  fact  that  it  is  the  work  of 
Mrs.  Siddons,  who  designed  it  and  put  it  up." 

Since  Mrs.  Siddons's  death  in  1831,  27  Upper  Baker 
Street  has  been  inhabited  by  Mr.  Justice  Grove,  and,  previously, 
the  story  goes,  by  a  fair  lady  admired  by  one  of  the  exiled 
French  princes.  Its  final  tenants  were  Mme.  Guy  d'Hardelot 
and  her  husband.  In  1902,  the  house  was  pulled  down  by 
the  Metropolitan  Railway  Co.,  to  make  room  for  their  electric 
railway.  The  L.C.C.  tablet  on  the  front,  which,  since  1876, 
had  marked  it  as  Mrs.  Siddons's,  was  replaced  on  the  new 
building,1  in  1905,  accompanied  by  a  supplementary  roundel, 
recording  its  refixing  and  the  re-erection  of  the  premises. 

The  oddly  variegated  tradition  of  the  house  is  heightened 
by  a  story,  communicated  to  me  by  a  great-granddaughter  of 
Mrs.  Siddons,  of  how  one  of  the  later  tenants,  who  had 
previously  been  '  advised '  by  the  estate  agent  that  Mrs.  Siddons 
'  walked '  in  it,  saw  "  four  times  in  broad  daylight,  the  lower 
part  of  a  woman's  figure  going  upstairs.  The  first  time  he 
thought  it  was  his  wife  and  called  out  to  her,  but  getting  no 
answer  he  went  to  the  next  landing  and  saw  no  one.  The  black 
skirt  was  so  real  that  he  was  able  to  count  the  flounces.  His 
mother-in-law  had  also  seen  it  once.  The  staircase  was  a  very 
spiral  one  and  it  would  be  quite  possible  to  see  a  part  of  a 
figure  without  seeing  the  whole." 

Not  wealthy,  but  possessed  of  'an  elegant  sufficiency,' 
Mrs.  Siddons,  with  a  spacious  drawing-room,  and  dining-room 
beneath  it,  was  able  to  give  large  evening  parties.  There  was 
no  difficulty  as  to  how  to  amuse  people — she  read  Shakespearean 
scenes  to  them,  and  they  enjoyed  the  unique  impression  of 
hearing  each  part,  equally,  rendered  by  a  great  actor.  On  one 
of  these  occasions,  Maria  Edgeworth  was  present,  and  so  carried 
away  by  the  verisimilitude  of  her  hostess's  Queen  Katharine 

1  Offices  of  the  Railway,  partly  over  shops. 


278  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

that,  in  common,  apparently,  with  the  rest  of  the  guests,  she 
forgot  to  applaud.  "  The  illusion,"  she  added,  "  was  perfect  till 
it  was  interrupted  by  a  hint  from  her  daughter  or  niece,  I  forget 
which,  that  Mrs.  Siddons  would  be  encouraged  by  having  some 
demonstration  given  of  our  feelings."  Haydon,  in  his  Auto- 
biography, describes  a  soiree  at  Mrs.  Siddons's,  in  1821,  at  which 
Sir  Thomas  Lawrence — too  hastily  haled  from  the  refreshment 
table  to  return  to  the  reading — was  to  be  heard,  for  some  length 
of  time,  guiltily  endeavouring  to  finish  eating  a  piece  of  toast 
without  any  sound  of  crunching.  This  is  the  sole  mention  I 
have  come  upon  of  Lawrence  being  in  Mrs.  Siddons's  house 
after  the  death  of  Sally.  Hazlitt— to  illustrate  the  ' valet-de- 
chambre*  aphorism  —  tells  that  he  heard  a  guest's  footman, 
waiting  in  the  hall  downstairs,  say  to  another  footman,  "  What, 
I  find  the  old  lady  is  making  as  much  noise  as  ever ! " 

There  were  other,  more  hilarious,  festivals  at  No.  27,  when 
"about  thirty  of  her  young  relatives,  children,  grandchildren, 
nephews,  and  nieces  were  assembled" — the  words  are  from  a 
pamphlet  by  Mrs.  Jameson.     At  one  such  family  gathering, 
which   took   place   only   a   short   time   before   her   death,   old 
Mrs.   Siddons  sat  in   her   chair,  looking  on,  "  with  great  and 
evident  pleasure,"  while  the  shrill-tongued  juveniles  danced,  in 
the  dining-room,  and  made  merry.     Mrs.  Mair,  in  Recollections 
of  the  Pasty  recalls  some  of  the  dancers.     Fanny  Kemble,  then 
at  the  commencement  of  her  stage  career,  was  there,  dancing 
away,  "glowing  with  life  and  joyfulness."     Young  John  and 
Henry  (Charles's   sons)   were   there,   and   the   younger   sister, 
Adelaide,  and  Charles   himself,  "  and  his   brilliant  wife,  with 
her  sparkling  eyes  and  voice  like  a  silver  trumpet."     There, 
also,  was   Horace  Twiss,  cutting  bad  jokes,  and,  apparently, 
in  tearing  spirits,  though  just  dispossessed  of  a  good  appoint- 
ment, owing  to  the  unexpected  downfall  of  the  Tories.     There 
was    the   well-beloved    Mrs.    Henry    Siddons,   with    her    four 
fatherless  children.     The  rest   of  the  party  was  made  up  of 
friends,  old  and  new,  "  all  joining  in  respect  and  admiration 
for   her  who  had   assembled   them   around   her."     If  not   on 
this  evening,  certainly  on  others,  the  assemblage  would  have 
been  augmented  by  some  of  the  six  children  of  Anglo- Indian 
George  Siddons,  who,  by  the  way,  grumbles,  in  his  letters  from 


LAST  YEARS  AND  SURROUNDINGS  279 

Calcutta,  at  the  infrequent  news  he  receives  from  headquarters 
as  to  their  welfare.  In  1818,  he  tells  Horace  Twiss,  "...  My 
dear  mother  writes  to  me  much  more  frequently  than  I  could 
have  expected,  considering  the  pain  it  gives  her  to  sit  long 
over  pen  and  ink;  but  Cecy  is  lazy,  and  even  good  Patty 
Wilkinson  has  not  been  on  the  alert  lately."  Again,  in  1819, 
"  Many  months  have  elapsed  since  I  heard  either  from  my 
mother,  from  Cecilia,  or  from  Patty  Wilkinson.  It  is  almost 
as  long  since  we  heard  from  Mr.  or  Mrs.  Fombelle.  We 
should  have  been  in  profound  ignorance  of  all  relating  to  our 
children,  but  for  the  kindness  of  friends  not  connected  with 
us  by  any  tie." 

Home  life  does  not  consist  of  a  perpetual  '  At  Home,'  and 
it  was  inevitable  that  Mrs.  Siddons  should  find  her  unemployed 
evenings  long  and  empty.  As  she  sat,  chewing  the  cud  of 
bitter  fancy,  her  nature  was  still  thirsting  for  the  stage  illusion, 
the  dress,  the  scenery,  the  conventional  surroundings,  amid 
which,  alone — thanks  to  her  Olympian  sanity — her  exuberant 
emotionalism  had  been  used  to  find  vent.  People  report  that 
she  resented  the  encroachments  of  physical  infirmity,  and  found 
old  age  hard  to  accept.  Poor  woman  ! — 

"  Qui  n'a  pas  F  esprit  de  son  &ge, 
De  son  dge  a  tout  le  malkeur." 

Then,  also,  came  the  departure  of  contemporaries.  Not 
counting  that  of  Kemble,  it  is  said  she  felt  the  going  of 
Mrs.  Piozzi,  in  1821,  and  of  Mrs.  Darner,  in  1828,  the  most 
severely.  In  the  latter  year,  at  Rogers's,  she  talked  to  Moore 
of  the  loss  of  friends,  and  mentioned  herself  as  having  lost 
twenty-six  friends  during  the  previous  six  years.  For  her, 
unmistakably,  the  current  was  setting  towards  the  shore  of 
death.  Yet,  the  sadness  of  her  last  years,  so  violently 
emphasised  in  Record  of  a  Girlhood,  was,  probably,  no  greater 
than  the  sadness  of  the  old  age  of  every  one  but  the  philan- 
thropist. Except  her  modelling,  Mrs.  Siddons  lacked  inter- 
esting resources  apart  from  theatre  and  family.  "/  am  no 
antiquarian,"  she  announced,  aridly,  to  Lady  Harcourt,  when 
expressing  her  boredom  at  Kirkstall  Abbey.  We  hear  little 
of  her  preferences  in  matters  of  taste. 


280  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

She  was  not  a  much-travelled  lady.  The  Oxford-bred 
King  of  Poland  wanted  her,  in  1791,  to  give  him  some 
readings  in  Warsaw,  but  she  remained  unpersuaded.  That 
she  appreciated  the  advantage  of  speaking  'the  French,'  of 
which  she  herself  knew  next  to  nothing,  is  shown  by  her 
taking  her  children  to  Calais  to  school.  In  1790,  after 
dropping  them  there,  at  the  end  of  their  summer  holidays, 
she  herself,  accompanied  by  Miss  Wynne  (afterwards  Lady 
Percival,  and  Cecilia's  godmother)  and  Dr.  Wynne,  made  a 
tour  in  the  Netherlands.  Michael  Kelly,  in  his  '  Reminis- 
cences,' narrating  his  travels  in  1790,  writes — 

"...  at  St.  Omer,  at  the  hotel  where  we  dined,  the  land- 
lady told  us  that  Madame  la  grande  actrice  Anglaise  Siddons 
had  just  dined,  and  quitted  the  house  not  more  than  a  quarter 
of  an  hour  before  our  arrival.  I  asked  the  landlady  what  she 
thought  of  Mrs.  Siddons  ? — She  said,  '  she  thought  her  a  fine 
woman,  and  thought  she  made  it  her  study  to  appear  like  a 
Frenchwoman ;  but/  added  the  landlady,  *  she  has  yet  much 
to  learn  before  she  arrives  at  the  dignity  and  grace  of  one.' 
After  this  speech  I  could  find  nothing  palatable  in  her 
house." 

Two  summers  after  Mrs.  Siddons  retired,  she  relieved  the 
tcedium  mice  by  a  two  months'  visit  to  Paris.  Cecilia  went 
with  her,  and  Mrs.  Jameson,  the  John  Kembles,  and  Mrs. 
Twiss  were  either  in  the  party,  or  in  Paris  at  the  same  time. 
It  was  the  Elba  interlude,  and  Paris  teemed  with  English 
people.  Campbell  was  one,  and  his  biography  of  Mrs.  Siddons 
contains  few  better  episodes  than  its  account  of  how  he 
escorted  her  through  the  Louvre  galleries.  There,  the  grand 
object  was  Apollo  Belvedere.  In  front  of  that,  after  standing 
for  a  time  in  silent  admiration,  Mrs.  Siddons  turned  to  the 
poet,  and  exclaimed,  "  What  a  great  idea  it  gives  us  of  God, 
to  think  that  he  has  made  a  human  being  capable  of  fashion- 
ing so  divine  a  form ! "  It  is  worth  noting  that  not  only 
Campbell,  but  Crabb  Robinson  (who,  also,  saw  her  in  the 
Louvre)  commented  on  her  glorious  looks.  Even  among 
sculptured  deities,  Campbell  observed  every  one  gazing  at 
her,  without  knowing  she  was  '  Mistress  Siddons.'  In  the 


LAST  YEARS  AND  SURROUNDINGS  281 

evening  of  the  same  day,  '  exhausted  with  admiring  the 
Apollo,'  and  after  eating  a  17  fr.  dinner,  she  went  to  sleep 
at  the  Opera — 'splendidly  dressed/ 

Another  day,  not  because  she  knew,  one  would  say,  but 
because  she  did  not  know  the  value  of  money — in  the  form 
of  cab-hire — Mrs.  Siddons  was  observed  (by  Kemble's  un- 
friendly biographer,  John  Ambrose  Williams)  toiling  along, 
on  foot,  in  heat  and  dust,  to  see  Louis  xvill  hold  a  review. 
Though  she  does  not  seem  to  have  echoed  the  bishop's  wish, 
'  Paris  en  ce  monde,  Paradis  en  Vautrel  she  evidently  did  a 
good  deal  of  sight-seeing. 

In  an  unpublished  letter  to  a  niece  at  Bath,  dated 
1  Bannisters  Lodge  Dec.  28,  1814,'  Mrs.  Siddons  writes, 
concerning  her  recent  trip : — 

"  With  Paris  and  its  wonders  I  was  much  delighted  and 
much  disgusted  and  tho  glad  to  have  been  there  am  very 
happy  also  to  be  at  home  again,  I  say  at  home  meaning 
England — 

"  It  was  an  expensive  jaunt,  but  I  fancy  we  took  the 
only  opportunity  which  the  state  of  that  unhappy  country 
is  likely  to  afford  we  must  however  pay  the  tax  of  oeconomis- 
ing  for  the  gratification  of  our  curiosity." 

When  the  John  Kembles  had  been  a  few  months  settled 
*  near  the  borders  of  the  Leman  Lake/  as  Campbell  puts 
it,  meaning  at  Lausanne,  Mrs.  Siddons  and  Cecilia,  in  July, 
1821,  paid  them  a  visit.  They  found  them  'perfectly  happy/ 
surrounded  by  what  were  then  termed  '  the  horrible  grandeurs 
of  the  Alps/  in  their  villa,  Beausite ;  as  to  which  contented 
British  Cecilia,  writing  to  Mrs.  Fitzhugh,  remarks  that  it  '  has 
been  built  by  a  person  who  has  been  in  England,  and  there- 
fore has  some  faint  notions  of  comfort/  Mrs.  Siddons  was 
( dying  to  see  Chamouny/  but,  the  expedition  being  judged 
too  fatiguing,  she  saw  Berne  instead.  She  ate  'of  chamois, 
crossed  a  lake,  mounted  a  glacier  with  two  men  cutting  steps 
in  the  ice  with  a  hatchet,  and  bore  all  these  fatigues  'much 
more  wonderfully  than '  the  others  of  the  party.  She  was 
occupied,  and  happy. 

During  the  'twenties,  the  interest  felt  in  'glorious  old 
Sarah/  as  Wilson,  in  a  late  number  of  'Noctes/  called  her, 


282  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

was,  necessarily,   in   the    main,   retrospective.     Joanna   Baillie 
thus  expressed  it : — 

"And  now  in  crowded  room  or  rich  saloon, 
Thy  stately  presence  recognised,  how  soon 
On  thee  the  glance  of  many  an  eye  is  cast, 
In  grateful  memory  of  pleasures  past." 

Washington  Irving  met  Mrs.  Siddons  in  some  one's  'rich 
saloon/  soon  after  his  Sketch  Book  had  been  published,  by 
Murray,  in  1820,  and  was  brought  up  to  be  introduced.  She, 
he  recorded,  "looked  at  him  for  a  moment,  and  then,  in  her 
clear  and  deep-toned  voice,  she  slowly  enunciated,  'You've 
made  me  weep.'  Nothing,"  added  Irving,  "could  have  been 
finer  than  such  a  compliment,  from  such  a  source,  but  the 
'  accost '  was  so  abrupt,  and  the  manner  so  peculiar  that  never 
was  modest  man  so  put  out  of  countenance."  Two  years  later, 
after  the  appearance  of  Bracebridge  Hall,  he  again  met  her,  and 
a  friend  suggested  presenting  him.  He  declined,  on  the  ground 
that  he  had  been,  once  for  all,  abashed  and  routed.  "  Come 
then  with  me,"  said  his  friend,  "  and  I  will  stand  by  you,"  so 
Irving  went  forward,  and,  singularly  enough,  was  met  with, 
"  You've  made  me  weep  again."  But  he  was  now  prepared,  and 
replied  with  a  complimentary  allusion  to  the  effect  of  her  own 
pathos,  as  realised  by  himself. 

Mrs.  Siddons's  serious  integrity  —  all  '  forthrights,'  no 
'meanders'  —  disconcerted  strangers,  and  they  thought  her 
wooden,  or  forbidding,  or  priggish,  on  account  of  it.  Simplicity 
was  so  essentially  the  atmosphere  of  her  ideas,  that  it  led  her, 
equally,  to  place  literal  confidence  in  professions  which  by 
other  people  would  have  been  received  as  mere  politeness. 
"  She  said  she  would  have  the  roof  off  Westbourne  Farm 
because  her  landlord  Mr.  Cokerill  [Cockerell]  had  said  she  could 
do  anything  she  liked."  There  was  a  naivet^  too,  that,  without 
brutality,  outwitted  impertinence  as  effectually  as  verbal 
cleverness  could  have  done.  Witness  Sir  George  Smart's 
account  of  an  episode  that  occurred  on  July  4th,  1827,  when  he 
met  her  at  Lord  Darnley's,  at  Cobham.  During  the  evening, 
one  of  the  other  guests  went  up  to  her,  and  said,  "  Madam,  I 
beg  your  pardon  for  asking  so  rude  a  question,  but  in  con- 
sequence of  a  wager  allow  me  to  ask  your  age."  She  replied, 


1812 


LAST  YEARS  AND  SURROUNDINGS  283 

"  Seventy-eight  years  old."  "  Damme,"  said  he,  "  I've  lost ! " 
and  abruptly  went  away.  Mrs.  Siddons  immediately  said, 
"  Puppy  ! "  "  Very  true,"  observed  Sir  George  Smart,  "  but  why 
did  you  tell  him  you  were  so  old?"  She  replied,  "  Whenever 
a  lady  of  an  uncertain  age,  as  it  is  termed,  is  asked  how  old  she 
is,  she  had  better  add  ten  or  more  years  to  her  age,  for  then  the 
inquirer  goes  away  saying,  '  What  a  fine  old  woman  ! ' " 

Mrs.  Siddons  did  not  love  brusque  and  incorrect  references 
to  her  earlier  triumphs.  In  1813,  Edgeworth  met  her  out 
dining,  and,  "  Madam,"  said  he,  "  I  saw  you  act  Millamant 
thirty-five  years  ago."  "  Pardon  me,  sir,"  she  said  stiffly.  "  Oh, 
then,  it  was  forty  years  ago."  "  You  mistake,  sir,  I  never  acted 
the  character."  Then,  turning  to  Rogers,  she  said,  "  I  think  it 
is  time  I  should  change  my  place,"  and,  with  great  solemnity, 
left  her  seat. 

Like  every  genius  whose  soul  is  unconquered  by  the  world, 
she  was  integrally  unsophisticated,  and  so  remained,  to  the  last. 
Campbell  deplored,  to  the  Rev.  Thos.  Price,  that,  from  a 
memoir-writer's  point  of  view,  his  subject  had  been  all  '  piety 
and  purity,'  and  had  had,  like  the  happy  nation,  no  history. 
"  Dear  good  Mrs.  Siddons,  she  was  a  very  angel,  but  devils 
make  better  stuff  for  biography."  Mrs.  Siddons  was  a  prime 
example  of '  the  genius  of  the  race  for  conduct/  and  it  was  that 
the  English  Philistine  venerated  in  her.  Almost  as  much  as 
Queen  Victoria,  she  elicited  the  plain  man's  respect — bone  of 
his  bone — for  a  good  and  great  woman.  Not  to  her  could  be 
applied  what  Quintilian  said  of  a  work  of  Seneca's,  abundat 
dulcibus  vitiis.  The  faults  she  had  were  not  charming.  Her 
nature  was  cramped  by  her  lack  of  humour.  One  constantly 
realises,  moreover,  that  she  was,  to  a  very  influential  extent, 
burdened  by  the  consciousness  of  her  profession.  Respect- 
able and  prudish  in  grain,  she  felt,  like  Garrick  before  her,  an 
incessant  obligation  to  walk  circumspectly,  in  order  to  redeem 
her  call*  g  in  the  eyes  of  those  the  slang  of  the  day  denominated 
'  starch  people '  —  the  unco  guid.  Campbell  speaks  of  the 
*  defensive  dignity '  she  assumed  to  protect  herself  from  the 
insolence  and  familiarity  of  patronage,  and  this  may  well  have 
been  the  case.  It  was  inevitable  that  this  almost  militant 
attitude  should  react  disadvantageously  on  strangers. 


284  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

Mrs.  Siddons  was  present  at  the  de"but  of  Fanny  Kemble,  as 
Juliet,  on  October  5th,  1829,  and  cried  with  joy  at  her  niece's 
success.  If  Fanny  felt  any  gratitude  for  such  tears,  falling 
from  the  eyes  of  one,  who,  for  thirty  years,  had  swayed  the 
public  imagination  as  no  other  actor  had  ever  done,  she 
dissembled  it  in  her  references  to  her  aunt  in  Record  of 
a  Girlhood.  It  may  be  said  that  the  painful  impression  those 
references  convey  of  '  weariness,  vacuity,  and  utter  deadness  of 
spirit  .  .  .  life  absolutely  without  savour  or  sweetness'  must 
reflect  general  family  observation.  On  the  other  hand,  Mrs. 
Mair  protested  against  what  she  called  her  cousin's  '  most 
exaggerated  view,'  and  attributed  it  to  her  everywhere  ex- 
pressed, rather  disloyal  abhorrence  of  the  stage  as  a  profession. 
It  is  interesting  to  know  that  Charles  Kemble  fitted  up  a  little 
recess,  or  box,  opposite  the  prompter's,  expressly  for  Mrs. 
Siddons,  whenever  she  could  come  to  see  his  daughter  play. 
"  She  came  to  it  several  times,  but  the  draughts  in  crossing  the 
stage  were  bad." 

\i\Recordofa  Girlhood,  the  first  mention  of  Mrs.  Siddons 
is  the  happiest.  It  commemorates  one  of  Fanny's  earliest 
interviews  with  her,  when,  being  taken,  as  a  very  tiny  girl,  on 
the  lap  of '  Melpomene/  she  looked  up,  and  ejaculated,  "What 
beautiful  eyes  you  have  ! "  Mrs.  Siddons  was  of  the  children- 
loving  race.  Grown-up  outsiders  might  find  her  lacking  in 
facility,  but,  in  the  company  of  a  child,  austerity  vanished, 
and  she  became  gay  and  full  of  smiles.  Campbell  called  on 
her,  with  his  six-year-old  son  '  in  his  hand.'  He  had  to 
leave  the  boy  for  about  an  hour,  and,  when  he  returned, 
found  his  '  face  lighted  up  in  earnest  conversation  with  her/ 
She  gave  children  her  best,  and  gratified  them  by  never 
talking  down  to  them.  Mrs.  Kay  tells  me  of  her  mother, 
Mrs.  Drummond — when  young,  the  ward  of  Richard  ('  Con- 
versation') Sharp,  one  of  Mrs.  Siddons's  favourite  visitors 
and  hosts — being  sent  for  by  Mrs.  Siddons  to  hear  Shakespeare. 
For  the  little  girl's  sole  benefit,  the  past  mistress  went  through 
the  whole  of  her  marvellous  Constance. 

Lart  tfetre  Grandmere  Mrs.  Siddons  successfully  accom- 
plished ;  it  came  to  her  naturally.  Mrs.  Mair  gives  an 
account  of  how  she  used  to  act  cook  to  her  little  grand- 


LAST  YEARS  AND  SURROUNDINGS  285 

daughter,  and  receive  her  baby  admonitions ;  and  how,  a 
little  later,  she  would  make  her  read  to  her  (!)  while  she 
modelled. 

When,  in  1815,  her  son,  Henry,  died,  Mrs.  Siddons — though 
with  her  sight  '  almost  washed  away  by  tears  ' — kept  repeating 
the  narcotic  measure  of  a  verse,  which,  she  said,  seemed,  as 
often  as  repeated,  to  tranquillise  her.  "The  Lord  gave,  and 
the  Lord  hath  taken  away ;  blessed  be  the  name  of  the 
Lord."  Seven  years  later,  when  she  lost  her  sister,  Mrs. 
Twiss,  Mrs.  Pennington  wrote  to  Dr.  Whalley :  "  It  must  be 
a  shock  to  Mrs.  Siddons,  as  I  believe  she  was  as  much 
attached  to  her  as  she  could  be  to  anything  out  of  that 
circle,  within  which  she  has  long  fixed  her  highest  enjoy- 
ments, and  out  of  which,  I  am  persuaded,  she  feels  little 
real  interest."  The  comment  indicates  an  observed  develop- 
ment of  that  indrawing  of  interest,  usually  described  as  the 
petrification  incident  to  old  age,  though,  with  equal  likelihood, 
it  might  be  supposed  to  denote  (other  work  being  done)  the 
soul's  last  task — that  of  fixing  its  affections  where  true  joys 
are  to  be  found.  As  early  as  1816,  W.  W.  Pepys  may  be  found 
writing  to  Hannah  More :  "  I  was  pleas'd  to  hear  Mrs.  Siddons 
say,  upon  my  asking  her  whether  she  had  read  some  modern 
work,  that  her  reading  now,  was  chiefly  confined  to  one 
subject,  which  now  seem'd  to  her  to  be  the  only  one  of  real 
importance." 

The  following  lines,  composed  by  Mrs.  Siddons,  may,  pre- 
sumably, be  assigned  to  this  period  : — 

"  Say,  what's  the  brightest  wreath  of  fame, 
But  canker'd  buds,  that  opening  close; 
Ah  !  what  the  world's  most  pleasing  dream, 
But  broken  fragments  of  repose  ? 

Lead  me  where  Peace  with  steady  hand 
The  mingled  cup  of  life  shall  hold, 
Where  Time  shall  smoothly  pour  his  sand 
And  Wisdom  turn  that  sand  to  gold. 


Then  haply  at  Religion's  shrine 
This  weary  heart  its  load  shal    lay 
Each  wish  my  fatal  love  resign 
And  passion  melt  in  tears  away." 


286  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

Every  character  simplifies  with  age,  either  in  the  direction 
of  spirituality  or  grossness.     Into  Mrs.  Siddons's  there  came 
no  increasing  inertia,  or  desire  for  ease.     Years  meant,  with 
her,   we   cannot   doubt,    a    refining    process.       Her    tinge    of 
Pharisaism — a  general  defect  of  her  period — did   not   deepen 
upon  her.     She  had  always   been  a   moderate   in   religion,   a 
Churchwoman   whom  nothing  short  of  a  cold  or  a  wet  day 
would   have   kept   away   from   Sunday   morning   service.      In 
spite  of  her  R.C.  father,  and  the  priests'  education  given  to 
her  brothers,  she  had  no  sympathy  with   ecclesiasticism  and 
ritual,  as  she  explained,  at  considerable  length,  in  a  letter  to 
Lady  Harcourt,  written  after  she  had  seen  something,  in  1790, 
of  foreign  church  ceremonials.     Such  opinions  were  skin-deep 
in  comparison  with  the  prose  sagacity  that  marks  her  avowal 
to  Ballantyne,  in  a  letter  of  July  5th,  1807:  ".  .  .  in  myself  I 
am  sure  I  am  not  mistaken.     It  is  a  vulgar  error  to  say  we 
are  ignorant  of  ourselves,  for  I  am  quite  sure  that  those  who 
think  at  all  seriously  must  know  themselves   better  than   any 
other  individual  can"     Mrs.  Siddons  had  not  laid  up  for  her- 
self   a    cynical    old    age    by   expecting  too   much   from   life. 
Words   she   wrote,   in    1803,   "The   testimony   of  all   ages   is 
folly  if  happiness  be  anything  more  than  a  name"  represented 
her   habitual   conviction.     She    had   faith   in   the   idea   of  re- 
union  with   those   she   had   loved,   expressing   her   faith   thus 
characteristically : — 

"I  am  one  of  those,  whether  rationally  or  not,  yet  surely 
innocently,  who  look  forward  to  the  hope  of  meeting  those  I 
love  in  a  better  world  as  one  of  the  rewards  for  having  struggled 
with  reasonable  decency  through  this." 

Though,  during  the  final  year  or  two,  she  ceased  to  read 
Shakespeare,  even  in  her  own  house,  Mrs.  Siddons,  on  days  she 
felt  vigorous,  used  to  describe  herself  as  '  charming,'  and,  as  late 
as  six  weeks  before  her  death,  laughingly  told  her  doctor, 
Mr.  Bushell,  he  might  discontinue  his  visits,  for  she  had  '  health 
to  sell.'  The  doctor  had  been  called  in  to  fight  what  was,  at 
her  age,  a  dangerous,  as,  with  her,  an  ancient,  enemy,  erysipelas. 
It  had,  long,  recurrently  afflicted  her  with  burning  soreness  in 
the  mouth,  and  Campbell — who  also  suffered  from  erysipelas — 
attributes  her  headaches  to  it. 


LAST  YEARS  AND  SURROUNDINGS  287 

The  end  of  a  life  is  always  tragic.  Payne  Collier  (to  whom, 
in  1832,  Charles  Kemble  showed  the  last  letter  Mrs.  Siddons 
ever  wrote)  describes  the  once  royally  beautiful  woman  as 
'haggard.'  A  letter  she  wrote,  in  1828,  to  the  Rev.  —  Denison, 
speaks  of  'the  bitter  cup'  of  painful  illness.  On  May  I3th, 
1831,  Fanny  Kemble  visited  her,  and  wrote: — 

"  I  was  shocked  to  find  her  looking  wretchedly  ill ;  she  has 
not  yet  got  rid  of  the  erysipelas  in  her  legs,  and  complained  of 
intense  headache.  .  .  .  Every  time  I  see  that  magnificent  ruin 
some  fresh  decay  makes  itself  apparent  in  it,  and  one  cannot 
but  feel  it  must  soon  totter  to  its  fall." 

A  drive  in  cold  weather  at  the  end  of  May  brought  back 
erysipelas  with  increased  intensity.  Fever  with  rigors  super- 
vened, and  Dr.  Leman  was  sent  for  in  consultation.  For  a 
week,  the  patient  suffered.  Cecilia  and  '  Mrs '  (Patty)  Wilkinson 
were  her  loving  nurses.  On  June  8th,  1831,  at  8  a.m.,  the 
wheels  of  weary  life  at  last  stood  still.  Mrs.  Siddons  expired, 
"  peaceably,  and  without  suffering,  and  in  full  consciousness," 
wrote  Fanny  Kemble,  on  the  day  itself. 

There  was  some  question  as  to  public  obsequies,  but  a 
section  of  the  press,  apparently,  opposed  the  suggestion,  and 
the  Charles  Kembles,  not  specially  desiring  it,  refused  offers 
from  '  many  of  the  Nobility  and  Gentry '  to  follow  in  the  funeral 
train.  To  the  public,  Mrs.  Siddons's  death  had  taken  place  on 
June  29th,  1812. 

Her  interment  was  conducted,  on  June  I5th,  by  an  under- 
taker named  Nixon.  An  upholsterer  also,  he  had  been  her 
landlord  in  Prince's  Street,  where,  finding  from  his  card  his 
secondary  occupation,  she  had  said,  in  1804,  "Well  then,  Mr. 
Nixon,  I  bespeak  you  to  bury  me."  Fully  five  thousand  persons 
are  said  to  have  witnessed  her  funeral.  In  the  Morning  Post, 
June  i6th,  1831,  may  be  read  as  follows: — 

"FUNERAL  OF  MRS.  SIDDONS 

"  The  mortal  remains  of  this  great  actress,  whose  name  and 
fame  must  be  immortal,  were  yesterday  consigned  to  the  grave. 

"  At  nine  o'clock  there  was  a  large  assemblage  of  persons 
in  Upper  Baker-street,  to  witness  the  funeral.  At  half-past  ten 
o'clock  the  signal  was  given  for  the  mournful  procession  to 


288  THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 

move.  The  covering  of  the  coffin  containing  the  body  was  of  a 
rich  purple  velvet,  and  was  placed  in  a  hearse,  drawn  by  four 
horses,  followed  by  two  mourning  coaches  and  four,  containing 
the  relatives  of  the  deceased.  Afterwards  fourteen  mourning 
coaches,  drawn  by  two  horses,  each  containing  four  gentlemen 
mourners  belonging  to  the  Theatres ;  two  gentlemen's  carriages 
brought  up  the  procession.  The  cavalcade  proceeded  along  the 
Park-road,  Regent's  Park,  up  the  Alpha-road,  through  Princes- 
street  to  Paddington  Church,  where  the  body  was  deposited  in 
a  vault  at  a  quarter  past  twelve  o'clock." 

In  the  vault  of  the  church  adjoining,  Lady  Hamilton, 
in  1810,  laid  her  devoted  mother,  Mrs.  *  Cadogan/  Thomas 
Banks,  R.A.,  the  sculptor;  the  two  Nollekens,  father  and 
son ;  Whitefoord, '  wit  and  diplomatist ' 1 ;  Sir  William  Beechey ; 
and,  as  we  have  seen,  Haydon,  were  all  buried  in  Paddington 
Churchyard.  Inside  the  church  is  a  mural  tablet  to  Richard 
Twiss;  and  in  the  chancel,  on  the  north  of  the  altar,  one, 
in  black  and  white  marble,  to  Mrs.  Siddons,  bearing  the 
inscription — 

Sacred  to  the  Memory  of 

SARAH  SIDDONS 

Who  departed  this  life  June  8  1831, 

In  her  76th  Year 


*  I  know  that  my  REDEEMER  liveth.' 

The  stone  over  the  vault  in  the  burial  -  ground  bore 
similar  words,  and — selected  by  Mrs.  Siddons  herself — the 
text,  "Blessed  are  the  dead  which  die  in  the  Lord."  George 
Siddons,  who,  on  his  retirement  from  the  Bengal  Civil 
Service,  lived,  till  his  death,  in  Harewood  Square,  was  buried 
by  the  side  of  his  mother.  His  wife,  who  survived  him  for 
many  years,  lies  there  too.  In  1890,  Mr.  Clinch  wrote  of 
Mrs.  Siddons's  grave  as  '  marked  only  by  a  slab  of  cement, 
bearing  no  legible  inscription  on  its  face,  and  distinguished 
only  by  a  half  obliterated  legend  cut  in  its  upper  edge/  In 
1907,  the  tomb  was  substantially  restored  by  Mr.  Henry  G.  I. 
Siddons,  and,  in  1908,  roofed  with  glass. 

1  Dictionary  of  National  Biography. 


LAST  YEARS  AND  SURROUNDINGS  289 

Out  of  the  life-story  of  the  foremost  woman  England  has 
produced  in  the  region  of  the  arts  one  main  impression 
emerges.  It  is  that,  with  her,  the  Muse  was,  indeed,  a 
*  heavenly  goddess,'  and  not  a  lawless  runagate.  Mrs.  Siddons 
possessed  firmer  moral  equipoise,  less  of  the  seamy  side  of 
the  artistic  temperament,  than  any  other  player  of  whose 
actions  and  habits  we  have  any  record.  It  were  well 
with  all  actresses,  with  all  artists,  with  all  who  belong 
to  neither  category,  if  their  worst  defects  proved,  at  the 
last,  a  paucity  of  humour  and  a  prudence  somewhat  over- 
marked. 

Mrs.  Siddons  stands,  again,  for  the  mother-woman  in 
combination  with  the  supreme  and  instinctive  actress,  and 
such  women  (if  one  can  speak  in  the  plural  at  all)  are 
exceedingly  rare.  At  the  same  time  that  she  was  a  con- 
structive artist,  ardent  and  tenacious  in  her  calling,  she  was, 
to  the  finest  fibre  of  her  nature,  the  simple  being  Campbell 
called  her.  An  affirmative,  productive  creature,  '  a  flash  of  the 
will  that  can/  she  possessed — for  a  player,  in  a  unique 
degree — the  sincerity  of  greatness. 

Her  most  distinctive  characteristic  of  mind — a  characteristic 
that  reappeared  in  several  other  members  of  her  race,  notably, 
in  her  nieces,  Fanny  and  Adelaide  Kemble — was  an  extra- 
ordinary sense  of,  and  passion  for,  the  ideal,  joined  with  an 
extraordinary  personal  power  of  impressing  the  sense  of  it  on 
others.  As  Stothard  said,  "  Her  own  mind  was  noble,  and  that 
made  her  acting  so."  Nothing  about  her  was  feline,  nothing 
serpentine.  In  virtue  of  her  complete  sanity,  she  may, 
possibly,  be  termed,  in  minor  matters,  a  Philistine,  but, 
whether  so  or  not,  she  was,  most  certainly,  an  Olympian. 


APPENDIX  A  (p.  188) 
ELIZA? 

MRS.SIDDONS  had  three  daughters  known  to  history,  Sally, Maria, 
and  Cecilia,  and  two  sons,  Henry  (Harry)  and  George  John. 

In  Mrs.  Siddons's  letters  to  the  Whalleys  there  occur  four 
passages  that  baffle  the  present  biographer.  They  run : — 

(March  I3th,  1785)  "  Next  week  I  shall  see  your  daughter 
and  the  rest.  Sarah  is  an  elegant  creature,  and  Maria  is  as 
beautiful  as  a  seraphim." 

(Sept.  28th,  1785)  "Your  little  Eliza  is  as  fair  as  wax, 
with  very  blue  eyes,  and  the  sweetest  tuneful  little  voice  you 
ever  heard." 

(Aug.  nth,  1786)  "My  children  are  all  well,  clever,  and 
lovely.  ...  I  want  sadly  to  find  a  genteel,  accomplished  woman 
to  superintend  my  three  girls  under  my  own  roof."  [N.B. 
Mrs.  Siddons's  third  known  daughter,  Cecilia,  Dr.  Whalley's 
godchild,  was  not  born  till  1794.] 

(Oct.  ist,  1786)  "My  family  is  well,  God  be  praised!  .  .  . 
At  Christmas  I  bring  my  dear  girls  from  Miss  Eames,  or  rather, 
she  brings  them  to  me.  Eliza  is  the  most  entertaining  creature 
in  the  world ;  Sally  is  vastly  clever ;  Maria  and  George  are 
beautiful ;  and  Harry  a  boy  with  very  good  parts,  but  not 
disposed  to  learning.  My  husband  is  well.  .  .  ." 

The  tenor  of  the  above  extracts  would  lead  a  casual  reader 
to  think  of  Mrs.  Siddons  as  the  mother  of  a  schoolgirl,  named 
Eliza,  the  eldest  of  three  daughters,  though  in  no  other  letter 
I  can  come  across,  from  or  to  Mrs.  Siddons,  and  in  no  published 
memoir  of  her,  or  of  any  member  of  her  circle,  is  any  trace 
of  such  an  Eliza  to  be  found.  It  is  unthinkable  that  the  death 
of  so  old  a  child,  occurring  later  than  October  ist,  1786,  should 
never  have  been  referred  to,  in  the  intimate  Pennington  and 
Bird  correspondences  that  record  the  illnesses  and  deaths  of 
Maria  and  Sally.  Equally  impossible  is  it  to  imagine  '  Eliza ' 
the  daughter  stated  to  have  been  born  to  Mrs.  Siddons  in  1781, 

and  to  have  died  in  infancy,  the  child  whose  name  is  given,  in 

290 


APPENDIX  A  291 

the  Bath  Abbey  Register,  under  Deaths,  as  Frances  Emilia, 
A  reference  made  by  Anna  Seward  to  an  approaching  confine- 
ment of  Mrs.  Siddons's,  in  1783,  can  scarcely  be  linked  with  the 
birth  of  a  daughter,  who,  in  1786,  was,  apparently,  a  schoolgirl, 
first  named  of  three.  Pending  the  possible  unearthing  of  letters 
explaining  Eliza,  we  must  stay  ourselves  on  the  surmise  that 
she  may  have  been  a  niece,  or  protegee,  of  Mrs.  Whalley,  or  of 
Dr.  Whalley — he  had  no  child  by  any  of  his  wives — who  was 
being  brought  up  with  Sally  and  Maria.  Dorothy  Place,  it 
may  be  remembered,  and,  also,  Patty  Wilkinson,  were  inmates 
of  the  Siddons  household.  This  surmise  is,  to  some  slight 
extent,  strengthened  by  the  fact  that  Whalley  used  to  call  his 
first  wife  (Elizabeth  Sherwood)  'Eliza.'  She  lived  till  1801. 
The  identity  of  Eliza  is,  up  to  now,  as  impossible  to  elucidate 
as  is  that  of  the  'young  woman,'  mentioned  by  Campbell, 
*  who,'  at  Mrs.  Siddons's  funeral, '  came  veiled,'  and  '  knelt  beside 
the  coffin,  with  demonstrations  of  the  strongest  grief.' 


APPENDIX  B  (p.  235) 


THE  appended  list  of  Mrs.  Siddons's  nights,  during  her  last 
three  seasons,  has  been  kindly  made  for  me  by  Mrs.  Charles 
Enthoven,  from  consecutive  Covent  Garden  bills,  for  these  years, 
in  her  possession  : — 


1809-1810. 

,8,«8n. 

1811-1812. 

jj 

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4 

4 

20 

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27 

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5 

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ii 

5 

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28 

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ii 

23 

20 

8 

15 

10 

25 

9 

8 

7 

14 

9 

8 

30 

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16 

27 

24 

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18 

17 

28 

12 

13 

10 

18 

12 

ii 

10 

18 

30 

27 

13 

21 

24 

15 

16 

12 

21 

15 

13 

12 
14 

21 
25 

15 

18 

28 

19 
23 

19 

21 

14 
17 

3 

19 
23 

15 
18 

17 

20 

26 

23 

19 

26 

20 

22 

30 

26 

2O 

30 

25 

24 

28 

21 

26 

26 

30 

23 

27 

28 

29 

31 

i 

4 

13 

7 

2 

5 

5 

9 

2 

7 

5 

4 

9 

II 

II 

7 

9 

12 

1809-1810  — 

1810-1811  — 

1811-1812— 

Total,  27  nights. 

Total,  33  nights. 

Total,  63  nights. 

INDEX 


Abercorn,  (ist)  Marquis  of,  141,  254-5 
Abington,  Mrs.  Frances,  27,  29,  63,  79, 

107,  172,  270 
Ancaster,    (2nd)    Duke    of,     15 ;      his 

Duchess,  15 

Ancaster,  (3rd)  Duke  of,  16 
Angelo,  Henry,  65,  238 
Anstey,  Christopher,  46 
Archer,  Mr.  William,  163 
Arran,  (2nd)  Earl  of,  255  ;  and  Countess, 

224 

Baillie,    Joanna,    166-7,     2I4~5>     216, 

282 ;     her     De    Montfort    quoted 

63,  214 

Ballantyne,  James,  129 
Bannister,  John,  92,  178 
Barry,  Anne,  afterwards  Crawford,   2O, 

41,  82,  91-2,  96,  171,  253 
Barrymore,  158,  177 
Bartley,  George,  58 
Bate,  Rev.  Henry,  afterwards  Sir  Henry 

Bate  Dudley,  20,   21,  23,   24,  29, 

42  ;  Mrs. ,  20 
Bath,  34,  37,  44,  56,  68,  185,  186,  188, 

254  ;  Theatre,  31,  34,  35-42,  49-51, 

52,  57,  168,  171 

Beattie,  James,  59,  62,  1 10,  260 
Beaumont,  Sir  George,  218,  221 
Beechey,  Sir  William,  60 
Bell,    Prof.    G.   J.,    quoted   73,    120-1, 

122-3,  I29,  270 
Bensley,  24,  177 
Bernard,  John,  quoted  10,  178 
Bernhardt,  Mme.,  77,  121,  132,  241 
Berry,  Miss  Mary,   172,  238,   240,  244, 

246,  256,  259,  265 
Betterton,  6 
Betty,  Master,  160,  251 
Billington,  Mrs.,  176,  235 
Birmingham,  30,  31,  33,  34,  1 12,  197,  241 
Boaden,  James,  4,  6,  7,  20,  22,  23,  37, 

60,   115,    123,   124,    127,    131,    132, 

133,  139,   140,   151,   184,  232,  234, 

269,  270;  quoted  56,  63,  64,  71,  78, 

83,  118,  147,  173,  230,  251,  263-4; 

cited    31-2,    50,    55;    his    Aurelio 

and  Miranda,  165 


Boyle,      Hon.      Henrietta,      afterwards 

O'Neill,  18,  19,  98-9 
Brecon,  I,  7,  13,  14 
Brereton,  William,  24,  95,  101-4 
Bruce,  Lord,   afterwards  Earl  of  Ailes- 

bury,  1 8,  19,  98 
Brunton,    Elizabeth,   afterwards    Merry, 

169 

Brunton,  Louisa,  169 
Burke,   Edmund,    118,    163,    164,   248, 

252 
Burney,  Fanny,  46,  47,  124,  167,  220, 

246,  249,  255,  257,  269 
Byron,  Lord,  81,  83,  127,  165,  166,  180, 

211,    219,    259,    261  ;    Lady,    216, 

219 

Camden,  Lord  Chancellor,  46 

Camp,  M.  T.  de,  afterwards  Kemble, 
149,  278 

Campbell,  Lady  Charlotte,  afterwards 
Bury,  74,  258 

Campbell,  Thomas  (poet),  I,  9,  14,  23, 
39,  57,  71,  80,  115,  117,  127,  143, 
145,  154,  167,  195,  222-3,  240, 
242,  245,  246,  247,  248,  280,  281, 
283,  284,  286,  291  ;  quoted  note  64, 
123-4,  269 

Campbell,  Thomas  (sculptor),  62,  145 

Caroline,  wife  of  George  IV,  191,  244 

Catalani,  232,  235,  243 

Chamberlain  and  Crump,  18 

Charlotte,  Queen,  33,  63,  67,  188,  243, 
249-50 

Cheltenham,  18,  98,  112,  197 

Cherry,  Andrew,  165,  269 

Gibber,  Colley,  160,  179 

Gibber,  Mrs.  Susanna,  29,  69,  82,  168 

Clairon,  76,  89 

Clarence,  Duke  of,  175 

Clinch,  Laurence,  97 

Clive,  Kitty,  26,  29,  77 

Coleridge,  S.  T.,  156,  174,  211,  259 

Collier,  John  Payne,  54,  148,  159,  222, 
287 

Colman,  George,  his  English  Merchant, 

Colman,  George,  the  younger,  124,  172 


293 


294 


THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 


Combe,  George,  206 

Combe,  William,  8,  10,  169-70 

Congreve,  82,  162,  his  Mourning  Bride, 

68,  69,  75,  84;  Zara,  76,  81 
Cooke,    G.    F.,    135,    138,   178-9,    180, 

259 
Covent  Garden  Theatre,  20,  21,  22,  41, 

135,    138,    140-1,    147,    150,    169, 

170,    171,    207,    231;    O.P.    riots, 

232-4,  263 
Cradock,  Joseph,  49 
Creevey,  quoted  173 
Croly,  Rev.  George,  quoted  63 
Cumberland,     Richard,    71,     164 ;     his 

Carmelite,  166 

Daly,  Richard,  96,  98,  100-3,  173 
Darner,    Hon.   Mrs.,    241,  248,    256-7, 

279 

Darnley,  Earl  of,  224,  282 
Davies,  Thomas,  quoted  42,  55,  57,  69 ; 

Mrs.,  23,  25 

Derby,  (i2th)  Earl  of,  172-3 
Devonshire,  Duchess  of,  Georgiana,  44, 

52,  157,  254  ;  Elizabeth,  60,  190 
Dibdin,  Thomas,  25,  165,  237 
Diderot,  quoted  26,  93 
Digges,  West,  101-6 
Donne,  William  Bodham,  58 
Doran,  Dr.,  quoted  160 
Downman,  John,  60 
Drury  Lane  Theatre,  18,  22,  24,  26,  27, 

28,  30,  36,  38,  44,  48,  49,  52,  56, 

97,  134,    135.   139,    MO,  148,   149, 

153,  156,   159,  160,  164,  172,   175, 

176,  177,  180 
Dublin,  7,  95-109,  173,  204,  205,  225 

Edgeworth,  Maria,  216,  277 

Edinburgh,  109-11,  144,  148,  245,  264 

Edwin,  John,  37 

Egan,  Pierce,  quoted  166 

Erskine,  Thomas,  68,  128,  219,  220 

Evans  (of  Pennant),  13,  14,  15 

Everard,  Edward  Cape,  26 

Farren,    Elizabeth,    3,    48,    79,    171-3, 

175,  178 

Fitzgerald,  Lord  Edward,  99 
Fitzgerald,  Mr.  Percy,  3,  62 
Fitzherbert,  Mrs.,  62,  163 
Fitzhugh,  Mrs.,  61,  216-7,  270 
Flaxman,  61,  62 
Foote,  Samuel,  247 
Ford,  Dr.,  29 
Fox,  Charles  James,    118,    163,  251-2, 

256 
Franklin,    his    Earl  of    Warwick,    58, 

165-6 


Gainsborough,  Thomas,  20,  44,  58,  59,  64 
Galindo,  224-7  ;  Mrs.,  185,  224-7 
Gait,  John,  174,  207 
Garrick,  David,   18,  19,  20,  21,  22,  23, 

24,  25,  26,  27,  28,  30,  32,  34,  69, 
71,  77>  79»  82,  88,   106,  note  no, 
136,  137,  142,  i43>  J6o,  168,  180, 
181,  229,  233,  246,  249,  283  ;  quoted 
92;  Mrs.,  149,  257 

Genest,  Rev.  John,  15,  49,  128,  130, 
133,  138,  265,  266,  272  ;  quoted  61, 
127,  166,  173,  207  ;  cited  65,  72 

George  in,  6,  35,  64,  67,  126,  159,  179, 
249,  250,  256 

George  iv,    141,    163,    176,    187,   209, 

223,  231,  240,  250,  256,  276 
Gibbon,  251-2 

Godwin,  William,  85,  125-6 
Goncourt,  Edmond  de,  12 
Greatheed,  Bertie,  15,  17,  142,  271  ;  his 
Regent,  90,  167  ;  his  son  Bertie,  203 
Greatheed,  Lady  Mary,  15,  16,  17 
Greatheed,  Samuel,  15 
Guy's  Cliffe,   11,  15,  16,  99,   142,   145, 

224,  256 

Hamilton,  William,  61,  125 
Harcourt,  Earl  of,  168 ;  and  Lady,  255 
Hardwicke,  (2nd)  Earl  of,  61,  108,  256 
Harlow,  G.  H.,  60,  128 
Harness,  Rev.  William,  219 
Harris,  Thomas,  138,  149,  231 
Haydon,    Benjamin,    190,    22O-2,    243, 

278,  288 
Hazlitt,    William,    136,    170,    230,    266, 

273,  278  ;  quoted  66,  118,  130 
Henderson,  John,  34,  36,  39,  44,  49,  52, 

57,  82,  91,  136,  179 
Hereford,  2,  5,  10 
Hill,  Aaron,  his  Zara,  85 
Hogg,  James,  79 
Holcroft,  Thomas,  10,  n,  254;  quoted 

26 

Holland,  Lord,  145,  256 
Home,   John,    his   Doiiglas,  91-2,    no, 

157,  182,  273 
Hopkins,    Priscilla,  afterwards  Kemble, 

25,  30,  138,  141-2,  145-6,  234,  242 
Hopkins,  W.,  30;  Mrs.,  126 

Hunt,  Leigh,  66,  89,  131,  136,  138,  175, 
266 ;  quoted  72 

Inchbald,  Elizabeth,  31,  33,  34,  35,  37, 
64,  81,   135,  141,  151,   189,  212-3, 
223,226,253,  256;  Mr.,  33,  34 
Incledon,  260 

Irving,  Sir  Henry,  72,  78,  117,  180 
Irving,  Mr.  H.  B.,  quoted  133 
Irving,  Washington,  136,  245,  264,  282 


INDEX 


295 


fackson,  John,  in,  148 

[ago,  Rev.  Richard,  quoted  16 

[ameson,  Mrs.,  120,  280,  quoted  45,  278 

[anin,  Jules,  quoted  57 

[ekyll,  Joseph,  219 

[enkin,  Prof.  Fleeming,  120-1,  quoted  73 

("ersey,  Lady,  250 

Johnson,  Samuel,  23,  94,  99-100,   119, 

127-8,  211,  224,  229,  257 
Jones,  Frederic  E.,  109 
Jordan,  Dora,  79,  165,  172,  173-5 

Kean,  Charles,  139 

Kean,  Edmund,  34,  71,  136,  167,  178, 
179,  180-1 

Kelly,  Michael,  158,  280 

Kelly,  Miss,  74 

Kemble,  Anne,  afterwards  Hatton,  sister 
of  Mrs.  Siddons,  154-5 

Kemble,  Charles,  brother  of  Mrs. 
Siddons,  4,  7,  58,  91,  133,  135,  144, 
148-50,  158,  178,  181,  226,  230, 
243,  278,  284,  286 

Kemble,  Elizabeth,  afterwards  Whitelock, 
sister  of  Mrs.  Siddons,  150-1,  153-4 

Kemble,  Fanny,  niece  of  Mrs.  Siddons, 
8,  123,  135,  148,  150,  189,  191-2, 
206,  217,  230,  247,  248,  269,  273, 
278,  284,  287,  289;  quoted  77,  117, 
146,  152  ;  cited  65 

Kemble,  Frances,  afterwards  Arkwright, 
niece  of  Mrs.  Siddons,  148,  195 

Kemble,  Frances,  afterwards  Twiss, 
sister  of  Mrs.  Siddons,  49,  95, 
150-2,  176,  1 88,  280,  285 

Kemble,  Jane,  afterwards  Mason,  sister 
of  Mrs.  Siddons,  154 

Kemble,  Father  John,  3,  4,  223 

Kemble,  John  Mitchell,  nephew  of  Mrs. 
Siddons,  4,  137,  149-5°,  278 

Kemble,  John  Philip,  brother  of  Mrs. 
Siddons,  3,  7,  8,  31,  32,  33,  34,  35, 
59,  61,  63,  77,  78,  88,  91,  95,  97, 
100,  102,  104,  in,  115,  note  120, 
127,  133-46,  147,  151,  157,  160, 
165,  166,  167,  172,  177,  178,  180, 
181,  185,  193,  226,  229,  231-4,  241, 
243,  259,  260,  263,  267,  268,  269, 
270,  279 

Kemble,  Capt.  Richard,  3,  4 

Kemble,  Roger,  grandfather  of  Mrs. 
Siddons,  4,  5 

Kemble,  Roger,  father  of  Mrs.  Siddons, 
i,  3,  4,  5,  6,  7,  8,  10,  13,  17,  54, 
56,  133-4,  203,  204 

Kemble,  Sarah,  afterwards  Siddons  : 
birth  and  birthplace,  1-2 
origins  of  Kemble  family,  2 
immediate  ancestry,  3-5 


Kemble,    Sarah,   afterwards    Siddons — 

continued 
her  parents,  3,  6-7 

trained  by  her  mother  in  careful  utter- 
ance, 8,  66 

general  education,  8-9 
lifelong  love  of  Milton,  9,  271-2 
juvenile  appearances,  2,  9-10 
early  maturity,  12 
art  slow  in  development,  12,  28 
staidness  and  high  principles,  12,  225 
engagement  to  Siddons,  13-15 
Guy's  Cliffe  interlude,  15-17 
marriage  and  first  appearance  after,  17 
good  acting  reported  to  Garrick,  18-19 
engaged  for  Drury  Lane,  20-22 
birth  of  first  two  children,  21,  23 
unsuccessful  debut  as  Portia,  23 
plays  various  parts  with  Garrick,  26 
continued  ill  success,  26-30 
animus  against  Garrick,  27,  28 
lack  of  pliancy,  28,  100,  245-6,  283 
dismissed  from  Drury  Lane,  30 
short  provincial  engagements,  31-35 
engaged  for  Bath  Theatre,  36 
success  and  artistic    development    at 

Bath,  37-8,  42,  49,  50 
frightens  herself  over  Macbeth,  39 
methods,  and  industry,  41,  56-7,  182 
originality,  41 

gift  for  artistic  identification  of  herself 
with  assumed  characters,  41-2,  71, 

93,  H7 
earlier  period  of  pathetic  tragedy,  42, 

78,  229-30 

"The  Siddons  'Oh  !'"  42,  175 
first  drawn  by  Lawrence,  45 
warm    friendship    for    Dr.    and   Mrs. 

Whalley,  47 

deficient  in  sense  of  humour,  47,  78,  80 
engaged  by  Sheridan  for  Drury  Lane,  50 
triumphant  second  debut  in  London  as 

Isabella  in  Isabella,  or   The  Fatal 

Marriage,  52-6 
generally  best  in  wifely  and  motherly 

parts,  55,  118 
strong  memory,  57 
looks,  57-9,  214,  230,  269 
as  Margaret  of  Anjou  in  The  Earl  of 

Warwick,  58,  165-6 
portraits,  59-62,  118,  128,  252-4 
queenliness,  62-3 
power  of  agitating  audiences,  65-6 
Royal  favours,  67,  249-50,  276 
social  homage,  68,  212,  224,  262 
excellent  appetite,  69,  243-4 
early  salary  at  Drury  Lane,  68 
at  head  of  profession,  68-9 
criticises  John  Kemble,  70    135 


296 


THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 


Kemble,   Sarah,    afterwards    Siddons — 
•    continued 
artistic  sincerity  and  truthfulness,  70, 

73>  74,  76 

vitality  of  her  acting,  72,  73,  117 
power  of  vitalizing  lifeless  lines,  75 
generally  classic,  idealistic  style,  77, 169 
later  period  of  majestic  tragedy,  78-9, 

132,  229 

inferiority  in  comedy,  79-80 
as  Belvidera  in  Venice  Preserved,  82-3 
as  Monimia  in  The  Orphan,  83-4 
as  Zara  in  The  Mourning  Bride,  84-5 
as  Jane  Shore,  85-6 
as  Calista  in  The  Fair  Penitent,  86-7 
as  Euphrasia  in  The  Grecian  Daughter, 

87-8 
as   Mrs.    Beverley  in    The   Gamester, 

88-9 

as  Mrs.  Haller  in  The  Stranger,  89,  158 
as  Lady  Randolph  in  Douglas,  91-2 
off  the  stage  no  actress,  93-4 
first  plays  in  Dublin,  95-7 
Mrs.  Crawford  pitted  against  her,  91-2, 

97 

well  received  in  Irish  society,  98-9 
jealousies    and     clouds     dating    from 

Dublin  second  season,  100-9 
wanting    in    readiness    to   give   away 

money,  107-8 

an  able  letter-writer,  108,  208,  248 
first    appearance    in    Edinburgh    and 

later  visits,  109-11 
stars  indefatigably,  m-2 
professional  trustworthiness,  112 
as  Isabella  in  Measure  for  Measure, 

II4-S 
during    earlier    maturity,     continuous 

artistic  improvement,  115 
as  Constance  in  King  John,  116-8 
power  of  self-excitation,  116 
as  Lady  Macbeth,  118-23,  1 68,  266 
as  Desdemona,  123-4 
as  Rosalind,  124-5 
as  Portia  again,  125-6 
as  Ophelia,  126 

power  of  startling  fellow-actors,  126 
as  Imogen,  Cordelia,  Cleopatra,  127 
as  Queen  Katharine,  127-9 
as  Volumnia,  129-30 
as  Juliet,  131 
as  her  last  new  character,  Hermione, 

131-2 
preference  for  acting    with    Kemble,  , 

134-5 
leaves  Drury  Lane  for  Covent  Garden, 

140 
stage  mannerisms  in  private  life,  142, 

245,  247,  282 


Kemble,   Sarah,   afterwards    Siddons — 

continued 

deficient  in  high  spirits,  154 
as  Elvira  in  Pizarro,  159-60 
refuses  to  act  unless  Sheridan  pays 

arrears,  160 
occasional  colloquial  realism  in  tragedy, 

165-6 
as  Jane  de  Montfort  in  De  Montforty 

166-7 

no  serious  rivals,  168 
magnificent  greenroom  manner,  175-6 
counsels  to  young  Macready,  182 
home  life,  183 
husband  dies,  186-7 
motherliness,  187-8 
deep  interest  in  Lawrence,   192,  194, 

201,  203 
character  to  some  extent  influenced  by 

profession,  95,  228-9 
confesses  acting  a  relief  from  sorrow, 

197,  229,  274-5 
power  of  inspiring  profound  affection 

in  daughter,  199 

fortitude  at  younger  daughter's  death- 
bed, 200,  230 
while  absent  in   Ireland,  loses  elder 

daughter,  205 

religious  disposition,  215,  285-6 
objects  to  being  lionised,  220,  224,  258 
prestige    outlasts    stage    period,   221, 

273-4,  281-2 

gives  evening  parties,  223-240,  277-8 
calumniated  by  Mrs.  Galindo,  224-7 
glamour  of  name,  230 
courage  in  emergencies,  230-1 
increasing  stoutness,  231,  264-5 
retires  during  O.P.  riots,  233 
salary  at  Covent  Garden,  234 
earnings,  234-6 
London  homes,  237-41,  276-7 
practises  modelling,  241 
illnesses,  242-3 
strong  ejaculations,  245 
seriousness  and  literalness,  247-8,  268 
tribute  in  Burke's  Reflections,  252 
sensibility  to  music,  260 
farewell  performances,  265-7 
public  readings,  269-71 
decay  of  power,  273 
foreign  trips,  280-1 
friendly  ways  with  children,  284 
last  illness  and  death,  286-7 
Kennard,  Mrs.  A.,  14 
King,  Thomas,  20,  23,  52,  53,  104,  105, 

138,  139,  177 

Knapp,  Mr.  Oswald  G.,  58 
Knight,  Joseph,  4 
Kotzebue  his  Stranger,  89,  156-8,  207 


INDEX 


297 


Lacy,  Willoughby,  29 

Lamb,  Charles,  66,  136,  142,  160,  174, 
212,  259 

Landor,  W.  S.,  138 

Lansdowne,  Lord,  70 

Lewes,  Charles  Lee,  97,  106 

Lewis,  Matthew,  his  Castle  Spectre,  91, 
165 

Lewis,  William,  140,  178 

Lawrence,  Sir  Thomas,  8,  45,  54,  58, 
59,  60,  61,  130,  134,  150,  158,  172, 
185,  189-203,  212,  226,  228,  232, 
233,  247,  249,  253,  263,  278 

Lillo,  his  Fatal  Curiosity ',  66  ;  George 
Barmvell,  72 

Linley,  29 

Liverpool,  18,  31,35,  112,  175,  235 

Macaulay,  quoted  44,  252 

Macklin,  55,  178 

Macready,  57,  62,  80,  89,  132,  137,  149, 

170,  174,  181-2,  233,  273 
Mair,  Mrs.,    138,    141,   202,    208,  209, 

214,  216,  222,  240,  261,  278,  284; 

Major,  note  59 
Malone,  6,  218 

Manchester,  31,  33,  35.  "2,  242 
Mangin,  Rev.  E.,  59,  122 
Martin,  Sir  Theodore,  149 
Mason,  Rev.  William,  255  ;  his  Elfrida, 

1 66 

Mathews,  Charles,  178 
Matthews,  Prof.  Brander,  153,  164 
Mellon,  Harriot,  175-6 
Milton,  9,  15,  269,  271-2 
Monckton,  Hon.  Mary,  afterwards  Lady 

Cork,  142,  219,  246,  257-8,  261 
Moody,  John,  18,  19 
Moore,  Charles,  195,  202,  203,  222 
Moore,  Thomas,  244,  259-60,  274 
More,  Hannah,  167,  215 
Morgan,  Lady,  142-3,  255 
Murphy,  Arthur,  82,  87,  164  ;  his  Grecian 

Daughter,  10,  45,  55,  57,  66,  69, 

82,  87-8 
Murray,    Harriet,    afterwards    Siddons, 

178,  203-4,  208,  209 

Northcote,  quoted  253 

O'Neill,  Miss,  166,  170-1,  259,  273 
Opie,  William,  214;  Mrs.,   188,  213-4, 

218,  248,  262 

Otway,  Thomas,  82-3  ;  his  Venice  Pre- 
served, 19,  68,  69,  75,  82-3,  132, 
135,  1 86 ;  his  Orphan,  83-4 

Pacchierotti,  162 
Packer,  56 


Palmer,  John,  34,  35-6,  37,  38,  5°.  57, 

171 

Papendiek,  Mrs.,  188 
Pepys,  Sir  W.  W.,  272,  285 
Pitt,  William,  35,  164,  251 
Powell,  William.  13 
Pratt,  Samuel  Jackson,  48-9,  67 
Price,  Rev.  Thomas,  I,  14,  222-3 
Pritchard,  Mrs.,  76,  I2O,  121,  126,  143, 

1  68 

Quin,  8,  1  68,  180 

Rachel,  57,  7  1,  79,  179 
Reynolds,  Frederick,  75,  165 
Reynolds,  Sir  Joshua,  47,   56-7,  59,  63, 

100,  118,  151,  174,  252-4,  261 
Robinson,  Henry   Crabb,    66,    72,   126, 

230,  264,  269,  280 
Robinson,  '  Perdita,'  176 
Romney,  George,  60,  61,  253 
Rosebery,  Lord,  quoted  40 
Rowe,  Nathaniel,  82  ;   his  fane  Shore, 

23,  69,    85-6;   his   Fair  Penitent, 

69,  73,  74,  86-7,  173  5  his  Tamer- 

lane, 74,  82 
Russell,  Samuel,  58 
Russell,  Dr.  W.,  quoted  52 

Satchell,  Elizabeth,  afterwards  Kemble, 

133,  147-8 

Scott,  Sir  Walter,  70,  81,  83,  no,  in, 

134,  136,    137,    143-4,    165,    167, 
185,  208,  243,  248,  250,  252,  259, 
261-2,  264,  273 

Seguin,  Peter,  96-7 

Seward,  Ann*.  47,  49,  70,  82,  87,  126, 
215-6,  244,  291 

Shakespeare,  25,  54,  74,  76,  86,  114- 
32,  137,  139,  145,  248 

Sharp,  'Conversation,'  15,  258,  284 

Shaw,  Rev.  Stebbing,  quoted  n 

Sheridan,  Richard  Brinsley,  29,  49,  50, 
2,  78,  121,  137,  139,  140-2,  156- 
225,  252  ;  his  '  Monody  on 
Garrick,'  42  and  note. 

Sheridan,  Thomas,  37,  41,  52,  55,  151 

Sherry,  Miss,  25 

Siddons,  Cecilia,  afterwards  Combe, 
daughter  of  Mrs.  Siddons,  note  145, 
181,  185,  188,  203,  206,  239,  271, 
275,  279,  280,  281,  287,  290 

Siddons,  George,  son  of  Mrs.  Siddons, 
58,  152-3,  187-8,  203,  204,  206, 
209,  250,  273,  278-9,  288,  290 

Siddons,  Henry,  son  of  Mrs.  Siddons, 
21,  22,  42,  50,  53,  108,  in,  148, 
179,  187-8,  193,  204,  206-8,  209, 
242,  285,  290 


52, 
64, 


298 


THE  INCOMPARABLE  SIDDONS 


Siddons,  Maria,  daughter  of  Mrs.  Siddons, 
38,  50,  187-201,  242,  243,  290-1 

Siddons,  Sally,  daughter  of  Mrs.  Siddons, 
23,  42,  50,  112,  158,  161,  185,  187- 
205,  236,  243,  278,  290-1 

Siddons,  William,  husband  of  Mrs. 
Siddons,  n,  12,  13,  14,  15,  17,  18, 
19,  20,  21,  22,  29,  30,  32,  37,  42-3, 
49,  56,  95.  ioo,  103,  160,  177, 
183-7,  195,  203,  204-5,  214,  236-7, 
239-40,  242,  290 

Smart,  Sir  George,  272,  282-3 

Smith,  'Gentleman,'  13,  25,  134 

Smith,  James,  161 

Smith,  Sarah,  afterwards  Bartley,  169- 
70 

Smith,  Rev.  Sydney,  218-9,  245>  25^ 

Southerne,  Thomas,  82  ;  his  Isabella,  52, 
54-5,  69,  76,  96,  115,  132,  259 

Stael,  Mme  de,  143,  quoted  71,  85 

Steevens,  'Shakespeare,'  107,  151,  218 

Stothard,  61,  62,  247,  289 

Stratford-upon-Avon,  6,  25 

Talma,  143,  145,  170 

Taylor,  John,  28,  137,  147,  177 

Tennyson,  Alfred,  Lord,   132,  137,  149 ; 

quoted  139,  181 

Terry,  Miss  Ellen,  88  ;  quoted  80 
Thackeray,  99,  157,  176;  quoted  8 
Thomson,    James,     his     Edward     and 

Eleanora^  42 
Thrale,    Mrs,  afterwards  Piozzi,  37,  57, 

162,  172,  196,  21 1-2,  237,242,  243, 

247,  270,  271,  273,  279 
Tickell,  Mrs.,  165-6,  175 
Tieck,  145 

Trench,  Mrs.,  75,  170-1,  180,  263 
Twiss,  Francis,  98,  151-2 


Twiss,  Horace,  nephew  of  Mrs.  Siddons, 
152-3,  217,  227,  240-1,  248,  260, 
265,  267,  269,  278 

'Tytler,  Sarah,'  quoted  32 

Walpole,  Horace,  27,  59,  67,  79,  note  82, 

94,  no,  125,  172,  250,  255,  256,  257 
Ward,  John,  grandfather  of  Mrs.  Siddons, 

6,  7 
Ward,  Sarah,  afterwards  Kemble,  mother 

of  Mrs.  Siddons,  I,  2,  5,  7,  8,  13,  14 
Wellington,  Duke  of,  80 
Wells,  '  Becky,'  1 8,  171 
Welsh,  Thomas,  53 
Weston,  Miss,  afterwards  Pennington,  50, 

151,  195,  197-201,  243,  285 
Whalley,    Rev.    Dr.,    36,  46-8,  49,  50, 

56,  67,  187,  206,  220,  291  ;  his  Castle 

of  Montval,  90-1 
Whitelock,  Charles  Edward,  153 
Wilkinson,  Patty,  17,  203,  204,205,  227, 

238,  239,  248,  257,  276,  279,  287,  291 
Wilkinson,  Tate,  32,  33,  173,  250 ;  quoted 

62,   112 

Wilson,  John,  quoted  59,  123,  note  129, 

164,  267,  281 
Windham,  William,  118,  124,   184,  224, 

248,  252 

Woffington,  Peg,  7,  130 
Worcester,  7,  8,  9,  10,  n,  20 
Wynn,    Miss  Williams,  15,  65,  77,  86, 

120,  273 

Yates,  Mrs.,  25,  27,  28,  41,  253 

York,  32,  33,  34,  35,  112,  173 

Young,  Charles   Mayne,  145,  179,   181, 

243  ;  quoted  71,  73,  134,  130-1 
Younge,  Miss,  25,  27,  28,  41 
Younger,  Joseph,  1 8,  31,  32,  33,  172 


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